How many more must die?

25.JULY.08

The tragic events of Wednesday, July 23, 2008, represent yet another bloody blot on our history. It is said that we as a people often wait until the horse is out of the stable before we try to catch it. But the virtual assassination of a lawyer within his office compound, and the savaging of a young child by the beasts we call pit bulls, are certainly not new to us. We have gone through those painful experiences one too many times before.{{more}}

Our customary responses to such tragedies have been to express the deepest sense of outrage, to speculate on the causes, to make emotional outbursts and to seek persons and institutions to blame. Then we move on to the next big issue.

Wednesday’s events provide a reminder that such occurrences are not dispensed with that easily. The tremors we feel are but mere symptoms of deep-seated, underlying causes. Something is clearly wrong with our society. Lest we be misled, we are referring here not just to our St. Vincent and the Grenadines society. The incidents to which we refer could easily have taken place in St. Kitts as well as in Trinidad, in St. Lucia as well as Antigua or, in Guyana as in Jamaica.

Violence, in its wide array of forms, has become almost a way of life in the Caribbean and the rest of the world. It is a manner of settling domestic disputes or personal scores, a necessary tool in advancing and protecting the illegal drug trade, a means of forcible sexual gratification, even a strategy employed for personal wealth accumulation. We condemn the use of violence, but often accept those who are successful at perpetrating such reprehensible practices. We march, we pray, yet seem to miss the point that the violence is very much a product of our social and economic situation and hence we cannot muster the resolve to collectively tackle it.

If anything, Wednesday, July 23, has reminded us that we have crossed over the threshold. Many of those who bring illegal guns into our society and utilize them or commission the use of them are among those who also smuggle in pit bulls and even flaunt them before our faces. The tragedy is that not only do we not grasp the danger in such activities, but we get caught up, too, wittingly or unwittingly, in aping them in these pursuits. Are we not sending the wrong messages?

So what next for us? How many more of these socially and life-destructing incidents must we endure before we come to the realization that not only do we have a serious social problem, but that it is more deeply ingrained and far-reaching than we can imagine. Crunch time is upon us. How many more must suffer?