I am my hair. I am challenging, I am defiant, I do not apologize.

And the next time some Wall Street multimillionaire or Oxbridge-educated middle-aged perpetually entitled white British editor encounters a twenty-something <insertracehere> woman from the Caribbean, or someone with locs, he will pause.

He will pause because he will remember someone else who was more than the stereotype.

Someone who was more than just her hair, or her ancestry, or her age, or her gender, or her accent, or her taste in shoes.

Fast forward two years, and an interesting synchronicity of events. The first, an emailed question from a long-lost acquaintance, someone who knew me from my “long curly light brown hair” past and who I have not seen in a nigh on a decade: “how did you manage to grow a ras?”

The second, a post on the kimaspeak blog on the subject of “Corporate Locks” (H/T PM):

In spite of all the above bravado, though, the idea of bringing locs into my workplace terrified me. This was not Grenada, the Caribbean. This was London. This was the Square Mile, possibly the most conservative area in London; this was my office where there are not too many black people in the first place. Was I making the right decision personally but a wrong one professionally? I have worn braids and cornrows in the office before- my thinking was- they need to get used to it- but am I possibly pushing the boundaries a little bit too far?

Which felt like reading a transcript of my own internal monologues.

Like kimaspeak, I have worked and lived in London, and have been a part of the financial world there – an insular, conservative (and Conservative) world that is also overwhelmingly white and male. My employers, my colleagues, my contacts, did not know quite how to react to the educated, ‘well spoken’, dreadlocked Trinidadian female of indistinct racial origin and something of an ‘attitude problem’, in so far as I failed entirely to cower in the presence of those around me.

And it was much the same at the university I attended, where those on campus had a hard time figuring out why I was so unlike either the “Black British” or the “yardies”, why I did things like run for student office or speak up in class about the fallacy of homogenising “the Third World”. I bemused them still further with my attempts to explain why an “Afro-Caribbean” society did little to serve the students from the latter region who did not share either a cultural or even necessarily an ethnic background with those ostensibly represented by the “Afro”.

Because like kimaspeak, I too have a swagger – the swagger of a certain type of overachieving “prestige school” alumnus – and the bravado of someone who had never been indoctrinated with the pernicious idea that one’s place in society was contingent on the colour of one’s skin. Someone who had never been damned with faint praise  – “oh, but you speak so well”; someone who had never been expected to fail or written off as a delinquent on the basis of an abundance of melatonin.

And yet.

And yet when I am getting ready for a day filled with meetings, I pause. If I wrap my hair, as I am wont to do, what ‘signal’ with that give? How will my contacts react when they see me for the first time? Does this look too ‘ethnic’? Can I really moderate that panel at a conference where the only other people of my skintone will be serving canapés while I look the way I do?

These are the kinds of questions with which I assail myself. This is what living in the UK and Europe and the US has done to me.

I am the only person at my organisation who looks like me. Back to kimaspeak’s post:

Should you hide or change your hair to “fit in”? And the answer is poignant: it depends on the company, look at how top managers, especially blacks, wear their hair.

This led me to a dead end. What if your company has no black top managers? What then?

What then? Then I pause, take a deep breath, and decide I will wrap my hair if I feel like it.

Because there need to be more people like me – non-white, non-male – challenging the assumptions of what someone who does what I do should look like, or sound like, or dress like.

Swagger.

The Express reports:

Citizens will no longer need a visa for the French overseas territories once their stay is 30 days or less.

Foreign Affairs Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon announced yesterday that following an approach by the Government, the French Government has agreed to exempt nationals of this country travelling to Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin and French Guiana from a visa requirement once their stay is for 30 days or less but does not exceed 100 days within a period of 12 months. Gopee-Scoon said the agreement would be in effect in about one week’s time with the exchange of diplomatic notes.

She also disclosed that the Government had also applied to the European Union for a waiver in the visa requirements for short trip stays in the Schengen zone which comprises 25 European countries.

Citizens of Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados and Saint Kitts & Nevis are already exempt from Schengen visa requirements.

I started growing my locs five years ago. Since then, I’ve fielded a host of questions from friendsfamilyclassmatescolleaguesrandomstrangers, including but not limited to:

- Do you wash it?

- How do you wash it?

- Can I touch it?

- Does it itch?

- Is it real?

- Does it hurt?

- Don’t you miss your real hair?

- Are you a Rasta?

- Why did you do it?

This last question, now as then, is the hardest to answer. My responses have varied, depending on the questioner, the context of our relationship and how I felt that day. I lacked a substantive, definite, “because.” I didn’t have “the answer” that the questioner – and I – was looking for.

Then I read this response to a column by Steven “Freakanomics” Levitt on the economic disadvantages of “sounding black” and of having a “black” or “Asian” name:

But if you’re intelligent and hard working, shouldn’t your resume get you in the door no matter what name is at the top? No, you’re saying. The world doesn’t work like that. But couldn’t it be said that the more HR people who encounter intelligent, hardworking people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones, the more people will stop pre-judging people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones.

Ditto “sounding black,” having a southern accent or a clearly Asian name. Deleting these things could be construed as self-hate, denial or disingenuousness. Is it better to be sneaky, calculating and take a “by any means necessary” approach in the workforce? Is “sounding black” something people need to apologize for? Do the people who “sound black” need to “invest in” the ability to sound more white? How best to bust a stereotype? By playing into it? Or defying it?

My hair is about defying stereotypes. To plagiarize myself,

I’m a twenty-something overachieving chick with dreadlocks and a predilection for wearing Converse to work

So there it is. I am my hair. I am challenging, I am defiant, I do not apologize.

And the next time some Wall Street multimillionaire or Oxbridge-educated middle-aged perpetually entitled white British editor encounters a twenty-something <insertracehere> woman from the Caribbean, or someone with locs, he will pause.

He will pause because he will remember someone else who was more than the stereotype.

Someone who was more than just her hair, or her ancestry, or her age, or her gender, or her accent, or her taste in shoes.

Under Article 8 (18/1) of the Immigration Act, homosexual men and women are not allowed to enter the country. Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 criminalises “buggery”. This Section provides a penalty of up to life imprisonment, if committed on a minor; up to 10 years’ imprisonment if committed on an adult (18 years) by another adult; up to 5 years’ imprisonment if committed by a minor on an adult. Section 16, relating to “serious indecency”, provides a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment for homosexual acts between men and between women.

This is one of those topics that I have long sought to write about and never quite succeeded. I have drafts saved on this very subject dating back to 2002. What’s changed? Very little, and therein lies the rub.

And then there were these comments from Bruce Golding, the Jamaican Prime Minister, during an interview on the BBC’s Hardtalk program:

BBC: Do you in the future want to live in a Jamaica where a gay man or a gay woman could be in the cabinet?

BG: Sure they can be in the cabinet – but not mine.

BBC: Do you want to live in a Jamaica where they can be and they should be and it would be entirely natural for them to do so?

BG: I do not know that that is the direction in which we will go.

So far, so straightforward, right? No. It is more nuanced than that, because here’s the exchange that preceded those quotes:

BBC: What are you doing about [the violence toward homosexuals in Jamaica]

BG: Well, we have given instructions that crimes against persons because of their sexual orientation must be pursued with the same vigour of any other crime.

BBC: But they are not, are they?

BG: Generally speaking they are – they are now. We do have a long-standing culture that is very opposed to homosexuality. I think that is changing. I believe there is greater acceptance now that people have different lifestyles, that their privacy must be respected.

BBC: Are you more accepting now … because in 2006 you were quoted in the Sunday Herald newspaper: “Homosexuals will find no solace in any cabinet formed by me.”

BG: In appointing a cabinet, a PM exercises judgement. That is his exclusive responsibility. There is no right to be in a cabinet.

BBC: But you have just told me that Jamaica is on track to give equality before the law to homosexuals – but you yourself have said that “homosexuals will find no solace in a cabinet formed by me?” That has nothing to do with equality before the law? Do you not have a duty to consider people on their merits – for cabinet positions indeed in any part of government?

BG: No. I consider people in terms of their ability and the extent to which they are going to be able to exercise their function, their independence.

BBC: You also clearly and patently consider them in terms of their sexuality.

No. That’s a decision that I make. That’s a decision that every prime minister makes. A prime minister must decide what he feels would represent to the Jamaican people a cabinet of ministers who will be able to discharge their function without fear, without favour, without intimidation. I make that choice.

BBC: What kind of signal does that send about Jamaica to the outside world? Indeed, to potential investors, to countries that look at Jamaica.

BG: One signal that it sends is that Jamaica is not going to allow values to be imposed on it from outside. We are going to have to determine that ourselves and we are going to have to determine to what extent those values will adopt over time – to change in perception and to change in understanding as to how people live. But it can’t be on the basis that lobby groups far and away from Jamaica will define for Jamaica how it must establish its own standards and its own morals.

And that, in a nutshell, is why homophobia in the Caribbean is so difficult to understand, so easy to misconstrue, and so challenging to confront – it is a morass of Victorian prudishness and religious fundamentalism combined with an extreme interpretation of masculinity and imbued with a sense of developing-country nationalism and a post-colonial assertion of sovereignty.

And it is everywhere. The Barbados Underground blog, for instance, is apoplectic that the “homosexual agenda is gaining ground in Barbados,” noting:

The issue of homosexuality will predictably evoke a flurry of comments which will seek to label the Barbados Underground household as homophobic. By now it should be evident that the BU household is firmly moored to a traditional set of values which has served our household well. The unwillingness of Barbadians to be proactive in structuring the kind of society which it wishes to adopt on a moral front is disappointing and regrettable.

Unfortunately certain core values which have guided our society very well through the years are being diluted. We appreciate that we have to respect the sexual orientation of all of our people. However, there is nothing to say we have to agree with it. We may appreciate in the so-call free world market the need for Barbados to operate in a common economic space. What we don’t appreciate is the willingness by Barbados to prostitute its value system for thirty pieces of silver.

The argument there is similar to Mr Golding’s in its appeal to “core” values, the rejection of any attempt to superimpose an alien (read: non-Bajan) and “dilutive” set of beliefs onto the “traditional” way of doing things.

Still, there is one aspect of these positions with which I do agree – any change in attitude or legislation cannot merely be a response to political or economic pressure from the UK or the US.

The Caribbean, in asserting sovereign rights, needs to take some sovereign responsibility.

So where to start? One suggestion comes from James Marchand, in a letter to the Jamaica Gleaner:

Put reasonable laws in place

The gay people of Jamaica do not need the permission of churches, Government or public figures to live our lives and have sex with whom we choose. However, we do want the Government to put its policy where its mouth is and ensure that violent acts against people of different sexual orientation and also other vulnerable members of society, such as the disabled, mentally ill and even people living with HIV and AIDS, are punished to the full extent that law provides.

This should be done with the creation of a hate crimes law which would serve specific penalties for persons accused of harming or murdering people because of their differences, whether perceived or otherwise.

In reality, it only takes an assumption or a suspicion of being homosexual in some Jamaican communities for someone to be attacked and brutalised. Of the many cases that have come to public attention of ‘gay’ men being beaten and even killed, very few have been as a result of these said men being caught in compromising positions. Yet, they are set upon and, in what might seem like sanctioned events, the all too familiar scene unfolds.

Indeed.

Further reading

1. ‘What Jamaica wants‘ – Church, gays divided on PM’s BBC interview – Jamaica Gleaner
2. Homophobic silliness and a failure of leadership- Jamaica Gleaner (Editorial)
3. Preparing for the World’s Backlash – Francis Wade/Moving Back to Jamaica
4. “Jamaica is represented in our imaginations as a space in which heterosexuality is homogenised national identity” – Tino Pinnock / Raw Politics Jamaica Style

1 – What are the economics of the proposed government-sponsored, Caribbean Airlines corporate/executive jet service?

2 – What are the current arrangements for government travel? Where do ministers et al go that requires the use of a jet leased from Guardian Holdings? How much does that arrangement cost? Why is it preferred to flying commercial services, either local or international?

3 – From Ria Tait’s Trinidad Express article on March 4 2008: “On allegations by Opposition Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj that CA received $350 million from the Government for the venture before Cabinet held discussions on the proposal last Thursday, Lok Jack said Caribbean Airlines did get money because “we had to begin negotiations and make downpayments”.” Caribbean Airlines had to make downpayments on an aircraft that hadn’t even been approved yet? Really?

4 – From the same article: “[Lok Jack] declined to say exactly how much money Government advanced to the airline or how much the service was estimated to cost on a monthly basis, saying that the airline was in a competitive situation.” Is anyone looking into this? We have a right to know how much our government is spending on this. And with whom, exactly, is CA “in a competitive situation” in the business of providing private jet travel to the government?

4 – Ibid: “Lok Jack said…the Government was “very interested” in being able to go on transatlantic trips and to travel African countries and therefore CA chose an aircraft which had the range to make such flights.” Why the focus on African countries? How much does a long-haul flight from Trinidad to Lagos (say) cost, in terms of fuel and wages for the pilots, etc? Are there no commercial alternatives?

5 – Ibid, but jumping around a bit: “[Lok Jack] confirmed statements in a Caribbean Airlines press release that Government would be underwriting the cost of the venture, eliminating “the commercial risk” to Caribbean Airlines.” Who owns Caribbean Airlines, exactly? What is the equity structure?

6 – In Juhel Browne’s Trinidad Express article on March 2 2008, Prime Minister Manning says a Caribbean Airlines jet service would be a cheaper air travel option for the State: “Right now, when some of us, when the Prime Minister travels in the region now, we do so by contracted private jet services. It costs a lot of money,” Manning said. Contracted jet services for regional jet travel? Seriously? Exactly how much is a lot of money? And again, why are commercial alternatives rejected?

7 – Who will have use of the services? Government only? Friends, family members, well-wishers? The Opposition? At what cost? Who pays what?

The relevant company insiders are fairly high-profile types who should be reasonably easy to track down. I’m tempted to make some calls.

I discovered him quite by accident – trawling the (badly implemented but kudos for even having one) RSS feed of the Trinidad Express, lured by the headline “Party politics and the voice of the people.”

The man is a true-true political commentator, and an aphorist after mine own Oscar Wilde-loving heart:

In short, neither good governance nor good government is possible in the absence of politics and there is no politics without the voice of the people. (From Party politics and the voice of the people)

In all the essential areas of life each year seems to be a replicate of the previous year. It is as though we are locked in a time warp of helplessness in which all our yesterdays become our tomorrows. (From Solving the political paradox)

Since it is not necessary to engage in real politics outside the party there is no politics within the parties. People do not join those parties because they are inspired by a vision which they are committed to work towards. People join those parties in the hope of securing placement by means fair or corrupt. (From New politics and old paradigms)

(Here’s a Google search which indexes all his articles at the Trinidad Express)

These are the works of a political animal, in the true and Aristotelian sense of the term.The first episode – Solving the political paradox, cited above – of Mr Harris’s 2008 commentary for the newspaper ended thus:

In the midst of all of this neither government nor people have much time to devote to the fundamental questions of what kind of society we wish to live in and what system of governance shall we build?

Those questions are fundamental to political discourse, and to politics itself, but I have never heard them answered – or even addressed – by a modern Trinbagonian politician. (I welcome examples to the contrary.)

It was only because I’ve been reading these columns that I was not wholly disheartened by the subject of the latest post over at The Manicou Report – a Facebook group with the subtle title of Fuck the PNM.

Mani’s take on this 365-strong anti-PNM army – and there are similar Facebook groups dedicated to every major political party in Trinidad – is that it reinforces political tribalism.

Says he:

If the makers of the group are trying to propagate the same type of tribalism by setting people even firmer in their ways than they are now, then they are on the right track. But if they want to get people to think for themselves and change voting patterns, then an “F*** the PNM” group on Facebook couldn’t possible be the way to do it. You can’t woo people over to your side by insulting them – a point lost on some politicians.

I would take his analysis a step further. The “party politics” in T&T is what gives rise to such self-defeating factionalism. This group is just a Web2.0 representation of the discussions taking place in rum shops, on street corners and in expensive coffee shops on university campuses.It is time for some new conversations, for discourse that dares to be more than a rehash of the same old same old.

Michael Harris has kicked things off in fine fashion. Who’s next?

There’s even a Facebook group and an online petition devoted to the cause, so you know they mean business.

Boissiere House, located at 12 Queen’s Park West in Port of Spain, is one of the last remnants of a dying breed: a beautiful piece of creole “gingerbread” architecture, characterised by intricate and elegant fretwork.

The house is being offered for sale – asking price US$10m – but as Nicholas Laughlin points out (via Newsday):

Any private buyer willing to pay that will almost certainly bulldoze it and build an office block or posh condominiums to recoup their investment.

He’s right, of course.

And since Boissiere House does not enjoy the status of a heritage site, said property developer would be immune from legal challenge.

And if this old house is destroyed, it would not be the first time art, architecture and history would have been sacrificed to progress, and not least in this country.

I am a big believer in conserving and celebrating Trinidad’s architectural heritage, and I’m not just referring to landmarks like Boissiere. Because all over Trinidad – from Aripita Avenue to Vistabella – beautiful old houses languish in disrepair, or are broken down in order to construct office blocks or social housing.

Land in this country is not yet so scarce as to make such destruction anything but wanton; and our contempt for our built enviornment reeks of nouveau riche incivility.

Architecture matters. Consider Jeremy Taylor’s recent post over at Notes from Port of Spain, in which he declaims the the “dirty concrete” of the Central Bank, and the “ramshackle dockfront.”

Says he:

The buildings are dramatically out of scale and out of style with the rest of the city, and they speak of money, power, and facelessness, a truly ominous combination. They say that someone in this mad little island aspires to make us like Miami or New York by building skyscrapers; someone has the wild idea that development can be represented by size.

And have you really looked at the architecture of these buildings? It is so bad, so impersonal and anonymous, that truly these buildings could be set down in any city in the world, and it really wouldn’t matter which. There is not a shred of Caribbean in them, not the faintest echo of Trinidadian-ness: no awareness of a tropical, almost equatorial climate, no thought of energy saving, no anxiety about the sea rising and spilling over the waterfront.

They are just big, blank, anonymous, unimaginative, uncreative. In a word, gross. Without taste, without elegance, without grace. Just big. Just expensive.

Exactly. As architect Rudlynne Roberts told Newsday:

The worth of [Boissiere] is in its architecture. Its method of construction, design and layout tells us how people lived during that time.

And more than that, the building is beautiful – unlike the unrelenting concrete monoliths local developers and government seem to equate with progress.

Nicholas Laughlin wants to “persuade the government that the Boissiere House is a crucial and irreplaceable part of our national heritage, that it must be bought by the state, restored, and put to appropriate public use.”

He also offers a list of practical suggestions, including:

– Tell people the Boissiere House is in danger.
- Forward this blog post to everyone you know who might be concerned.
- If you have a blog, write your own post there, or link to this.
- Write a letter to the editor.
- If you work in the media, try to get your newspaper or station to run a story.
- If you own a camera, stop by 12 Queen’s Park West, take some photos, post them online, or just forward them to friends.
- If you know someone in the Ministry of Culture, tell them you’re concerned and ask them to speak to their superior about saving the Boissiere House.
- Call Town and Country and urge them not to give planning permission for a new building on this site.
- Call the National Trust and ask what you can do to help.
- If you know a politician of any party on any level, tell them you’re concerned and ask them to talk to their party leadership.
- Read about the history of the house in Olga Mavrogordato’s book Voices in the Street, or John Newel Lewis’s book Ajoupa, and share this with others.
- Come to the event we’re planning at Alice Yard next week Friday to discuss why this and other historic buildings are worth preserving.
- Email me (my address is in the sidebar to the right) and tell me you’d like to be on a mailing list to hear about further efforts. A website is on its way, also an online petition.
- If you know a member of the Boissiere family that owns the house, ask them to consider putting a no-demolition clause in the sale contract, or to negotiate with the government to arrive at a reasonable sale price that might make it easier to save the building.
- And if you are a multi-millionaire property developer, consider doing something truly enlightened: buy the house, pay to have it restored, put it to some use that will not damage its fabric.
- Finally: ask yourself if you’d be willing to stand in the hot sun with a placard, if it comes to that.

It may well come to that.

I have the right

• not to justify my existence in this world
• not to keep the races separate within me
• not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity
• not to justify my ethnic legitimacy
• to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify
• to identity myself differently than how my parents identity me
• to identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters
• to identify myself differently in different situations
• to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial
• to change my identity over my lifetime–and more than once
• to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people
• to freely chooose whom I befriend and love

By Maria P. P. Root (via Light-skinn-ed Girl)

This is a thought-provoking piece of work, with which I can at least partially identify. So much of the discussion about “mixed-race issues” is limited to the experience of bi-racial (white/black) people living in the US of A; the “Bill of Rights” is broader in scope.

Some of its declarations I have always taken for granted – never have I had to justify my existence, for instance. And the phrase “physically ambiguous” is downright amusing.

But it made me realise that I don’t know how my parents self-identify, and nor do I know how they would describe my siblings and I.

And I have had to justify my ethnic legitimacy, on more than one occasion and to the gamut of family, friends and the parents of former paramours.

It’s a strange thing to be a victim of generic racism. It sounds absurd, but I have always wanted to ask, when faced with such discrimination, which part of me most offends.

In other words, is it because I is black? Or is it because I am not Indian/Chinese/White enough?

(Or, more recently, is it because I’m a twenty-something overachieving chick with dreadlocks and a predilection for wearing Converse to work? Hmm.)

I have never felt (insert ethnic grouping here) enough.

Still, I have had more experience of Trinidad’s version of black and Indian culture than I have had exposure to my Chinese and White heritage. But I am comfortable with none of these. In situations that are purely one or the other, I have always felt ill at ease.

When I donned a shalwar to attend a Divali celebration at my highschool, eyebrows were raised.

When, in my younger days, I was briefly part of the tennis-playing set, I didn’t quite fit in with rivals at tournaments in Port of Spain and environs, and that wasn’t just because they were way better than I. We didn’t speak the same language – and if you’ve ever hung out with the Westmoorings crew, you’ll know what I mean.

Total lack of Chinese-related anecdotes is sufficiently telling, methinks.

I have no real, first-hand experience of what it is like to be white/Indian/Chinese in Trinidad.

Nor do I know what blackness means, as much as I use it as political shorthand for my identification with issues of racism, discrimination and other minority concerns.

Does that make my claim to these multiple strands of history less valid? Am I less authentic because I exercise my right to tick “Other”?

Nothing like an identity crisis on a Friday afternoon.

My employers are unimpressed, and are making me offers no sane career minded individuals ought to refuse. And at the other end, the Trinidadian end, the powers that be seem to be hell bent on making me regret this decision.

So this quote from Adam Andrews, blogging over at D Blue Pill, seems particularly relevant:

It becomes difficult to find the balance between caring about a nation and preserving the self. I question my motivation, should I be concerned with what my country should do for me, or should I be concerned with what I can do for my country? [From "Split Me In Two"]

Exactly. I’m going back because I care about my country, and what I can do to contribute. So why are [certain unnamed and deeply hostile bureaucrats] making this so damned difficult?

I’ve been preparing myself for this, and I can’t say that I haven’t experienced this kind of small-minded ineptitude before.

But the reality is still bitter. And disenchanting.

There. I’ve said it. I don’t care about the World Social Forum, which purports to be:

an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo- liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centred on the human person” [Porto Alegre Charter]

Shivonne Du Barry offers a more more concise take on the WSF over at her Ramblings and Reason blog:

… more than anything, it enables discussion of critical social issues that impact us, especially given our place in the global economic structure.

Fair enough. Except that in my experience of this and similar fora, there is very little reflective thinking or democratic debate; nor is there the free exchange of anything except leftist propaganda.

Back in 2004, I worked as a volunteer translator/logistics guru/general lackey at the European Social Forum in London. I’d been talked into by a couple of socially-minded friends of mine, and in any event, it was a very LSE thing to do (a bit of self-important saving the world action coupled with a good line or three on the all-important CV, etc).

I started out with the very best of intentions. By the third day, I was sick to death of people trying to persuade me of the evils of globalisation-as-imperialism.

These non-conformist-conformists – overwhelmingly white, European, “dreadlocked”, hemp-clothed and DC-shod – all evangelizing about evils of capitalism (and selling £20 t-shirts), environmentalism (while covering the streets of Bloomsbury and the halls of Alexandra Palace with forests of paper and pamphlets) and Saving Africa (because I’m so into Bob Marley, and he was African, you know?)

If this is an exaggeration, it is only a mild one. I went to the ESF hoping for some of that much-vaunted conversation, for discourse, for an actual exchange of ideas. What I got was reactionary rhetoric and sometimes disturbingly extremist left-wing propaganda.

As for freedom of expression? Not quite. Subhi al Mashadani, leader of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, was shouted off the stage by hecklers who accused him of “collaborating” with the US.

Security had to usher him away while we hapless volunteers attempted to get people out of the room.

And the people shouting him down? Europeans who have never themselves lived under occupation, and many of whom are career activists who never miss a WSF because they don’t actually need to work. What need have they of a trade union?

And all this talk of changing the world? It’s just talk. Because all the petitions, all the Facebook groups and all the clever t-shirts in the world will not make a jot of difference. Fora like these are sops to the liberal conscience. Why wait for the WSF, or ESF, or ASF?

Change something right now – walk instead of drive, buy vegetables from your local farmer/parlour/vendor, support your local artisans, stay home and help your children with their homework instead of lining the pockets of fete promoters…

I digress. But the point is that change involves doing, and doing involves a lot more than screaming “collaborator” at someone with whom you disagree.

Yes, another world is possible, and another T&T is possible. But we have to come better than this.