1: Setting Precedent: Eldership & Selfishness

Hello dear audience! This is Jacqui, writer and researcher of “Under the Sycamore Tree.” Here are our show notes for Episode 1: “Setting Precedent: Eldership & Selfishness.” 

Possible triggers in this episode include domestic violence, family abuse, and stigma. The organizations and organizers featured in this are:

• Susan Doorson, Chair of Women’s Way Foundation of Suriname. Susan Doorson, Chair of Women’s Way Foundation of Suriname. Founded in 2008, Women’s Way Foundation is the oldest, first, and only lesbian and bisexual organization in Suriname. Their mission is to increase awareness around sexuality and health, and to ensure the emancipation of women—specifically women who (also) have sex with women and trans men—so that the quality of their lives become better and free from stigma and discrimination. Women’s Way can be found online here: Website; their Equality Fund webpage; Facebook; and Instagram: @wswf.sr 

• Colleen Douglas-Hinds, Director of Guyana Rainbow Foundation. Guyana RainBow Foundation (GuyBow) is an organization founded in 2000 whose mission is to support and strengthen the capacity of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer women, along with increasing the overall respect, acceptance of, and support for non-gender conforming persons and non-heteronormative sexual orientations in Guyanese society. GuyBow can be found online here: Website; and their Equality Fund webpage. 

• Lucien Govaard, Board Member of CARI-Flags. Caribbean Forum for Liberation & Acceptance of Genders & Sexualities (CariFLAGS) was formed in the late 90s as a loose coalition of actors and activists responding to developing issues facing the LGBTQ community. The group has provided leadership in articulating an indigenous LGBTQ voice and agenda for the Caribbean regionally and in support of local groups. In 2008, a core group renewed the CariFLAGS mission with a focus on human rights, health, culture, and spirituality. In 2012, CariFLAGS transitioned into a regional movement-building coalition: activists from 15 territories agreed to work together to develop a strong, representative, regional organization capable of advancing a Caribbean LGBTQ agenda. Cari-FLAGS can be found online on Facebook; and their Equality Fund webpage. 

Our interviews with Susan and Colleen were held with our Producer, Dave-Ann Moses, in late 2021. Carla’s conversation with Lucien and Larry Chang was held in April 2022. Larry is a Chinese-Jamaican gay man, community organizer and spiritual counselor. Larry has much to offer the Asian-American, LGBT, Caribbean-American, and People of Color communities, but it is his urgent message of developing local sustainability that is of immediate interest to all. Larry was born in Jamaica of Hakka Chinese immigrant parents; he is a founding member of the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, J-FLAG . He had previously organized a gay group in Jamaica, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) as early as 1978 in a fiercely hostile climate. He held the position of General Secretary and was Publisher and Editor of its newsletter, Jamaica Gaily News. Learn more about Larry’s art and cultural organizing work via his website!

Colin Robinson’s words came from one of his final interviews in this plane: “Sex & Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago with Colin Robinson,” Interview with Abby Charles, CaribNationTV. 

I hope you connect with these texts and enjoy the episode even further! Sincerely, 

Jacks.

Transcript

EPISODE OPENER

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;31;08, Susan Doorson (Women’s Way Foundation, Suriname): Millennials, They don't care. You know, they don't like sucking up to no one, like they will destroy everything. They will destroy everything. ‘You don’t like me?’ destroy it burn the place down. 

Carla’s Welcome!

Host Carla Moore: Welcome to the Under the Sycamore Tree podcast produced by Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated and I am your host, Carla Moore of Moore Talk JA. Lend we you ears, cause we ago do something good wid it.

INTRODUCTION

00;00;31;10 - 00;01;49;23, [SCRIPT] Carla: One of the privileges of this podcast is to speak with groups established in different eras. Some were founded in the last decade, like Saint Lucia's Helen's daughter, Integrated Health Outreach of Antigua and Barbuda and Wapichan Women's Movement of Guyana. While some are at least a few decades old, like regional organization Cariflags, Guyana Trans United and the Guyana Rainbow Foundation and Belize’s POWA. The beginning of these organizations reach back to the end of what could be considered the first recognized wave of openly queer and feminist identifying, organizing.

Trigger warning

We'll be discussing topics that some listeners may find triggering, including domestic violence, family abuse and stigma. We understand that these topics can be difficult to hear about, and we want to remind our listeners that it's okay to take a break if you need to. 

INTRODUCTION, cont’d

Carla: This is Colleen Douglas-Hinds, director of Guyana Rainbow Foundation, also known as GuyBow. At the time of this recording, she was planning to hand over leadership of GuyBow, to Shifani Harilall.

Shifani is a former client, now stepping forward to the position of leader.

00;01;49;25 - 00;03;45;24, [INTERVIEW, 2021] Colleen Douglas-Hinds (Guyana Rainbow Foundation, Guyana): Okay, well, I will talk a little bit about the family planning and I want to hand over to Shivani to tell you a little bit more how she she has been doing quite a lot and it's also an opportunity for her to learn. I've already announced in several places that, you know, I am aiming to, uh, to, to minimize my responsibilities in the organization.

Colleen continues: I've been there for 21 years. When GuyBow started, there were some things that were very clear from the beginning. The need for a safe space was very, very clear from the beginning. So I always say to people, 21 years, we've always wanted a safe space. The need to have support system is in place not just for LGBTQ+ persons, but also for family members of those persons was always very important. And they were important. 

Colleen continues:We recognize the importance of these things because I remember my own personal experience of of of coming out. I never felt that there was any support system anywhere in doing that. And I pretty much did that on my own with my family. And time for me had, you know, even though she was in tears, my mom was was very supportive and talked about how much she loved me regardless, you know, And I took that as an inspiration and a motivation to ensure that one of the things that GuyBow did as an organization was to provide that support system, to other families who were either struggling to come out to their family members or when they did to sort of embrace and support the reaction to those family members who were receiving that information. 

Colleen continues: So that was the first aspect of our family program.

00;03;45;27 - 00;04;29;11, Carla: Hearing Colleen's plan for peace at retirement or in her more diplomatic words, ‘stepping back’, she might just feel like a dim glow of sun getting ever brighter on an upturned face, like a queer elder making a living through queer organizing and then being able to retire peacefully. Oh, we love to see it. 

Carla continues: This is Susan Doorson, Chair of Women's Way Foundation of Suriname listen as she tells us more about Women's Way and recounts how she inherited the leadership of the organization from its founders. 

[INTERVIEW, 2021] Susan Doorson (Women’s Way Foundation): I am the Chair of Women’s Way Foundation. Women’s Way Foundation is an organization that focuses on anything, any issues surrounding lesbian women, bisexual women, queer women and transmasculine persons in Suriname.

00;04;40;04 - 00;05;23;12, Susan continues: For the Chair of Women’s Way Foundation to literally hand me over the organization when she left, meant so much, that i now get to lead and help my people be better when I wasn't well at all ten years ago, means a lot.

Carla: Thankfully Susan got quite candid about intergenerational issues within queer organizing, with disagreements going both ways.

Susan: To have this this this group of people who are ready just supporting each other and share.

Susan continues: And I missed that when I was, when I came out. So I didn’t have that, I had these old women in Women’s Way Foundation. It was a bunch of old women who already had children, then decided to live their, their best lives and be who they really are. And then they decided to start this organization cause they though it was important. And I was the only young one. I was I was 17, in the midst of 35 year olds, 50 year old women. So the gap was big. And to now see people younger than me, 16 and 15, just coming out and living their best lives, it is amazing.

00;05;59;22 - 00;06;34;25, Carla: We ended our last episode with a map and will begin this next episode with another type of map, something like a map of our lineage. We're speaking to Larry Chang, who describes himself as a Chinese Jamaican gay man, born to Hakka, Chinese immigrant parents. He's a community organizer and also a spiritual counselor. We know Larry, as a founder of Jamaica's Gay Freedom Movement, or GFM, Founded in 1978, GFM is one of our region's earliest gay rights organizations.

Carla continues: Larry is also a founding member of the Jamaica Forum on Lesbians Asexuals and Gays or JFLAG, currently one of our region's oldest active queer rights organizations. Larry's life portal takes us from Michael Manley’s, Jamaica, to Black Power organizing in the Bay Area on the west coast of the United States. You will notice that intergenerational frictions exist.

Carla continues: Some elder activists feel younger activists are too hard, line and uncompromising, while for some of the younger activists, their elders seem too respectability oriented, a little too conservative in their demands and possibly too slow in their acceptance of diverse gender identities, proper pronoun usage and inclusion of disability justice. Sometimes these generalizations come to define our ways of being together, masking the true work and being of elders, youth and all in between.

Carla continues: During this episode, we will explore some of what and who came before this moment in our movement. 

Carla continues: We recognize that these frictions exist and have existed for some time. But what are the roots of these frictions? How can we focus on commonalities within the queer and gender justice spaces? Don't we want our traumas validated in this space? We need to recognize that others’ traumas are equally valid and hold space for them as well.

00;08;06;16 - 00;11;07;12, Carla continues: What could this look like? Susan: So I think the knowledge sharing within the age groups is also important because we tend to not do that. And also because, I don't know, I don't know if you experience the same thing, but like for example, in the Caribbean or in Suriname, adults don't share their experiences with children or people they consider children. They voice these opinions about our lives to us…Bitch I've been going through shit. I've been going through a lot of shit. I've been out there struggling with these lesbians. Let me be mom! I see. 

Susan continues: I've seen young out LGBT advocates actually destroy the hard work that their forefathers did, right. I think that comes, also comes out of a sense that I know in, in the past I think activism was assertive yet subtle. And now we tend to be more aggressive and open and sometimes you, you take one step forward and ten steps back with that, but in Suriname they always say that you could catch more flies with honey than with coal

Susan continues: So sometimes you just suck up to your haters to like, get where you need to be. But millennials, they don't care. They don't, they don't like sucking up to no one. Like they'll destroy everything. They will destroy everything, you don’t like me destroy it, burn the place down it needs to end now and like, I’ve been really fighting with our young our young LGBT advocates about that. To teach them to execute finesse and not just be a bad bitch all the time. Just execute with finesse, like get things done in an orderly fashion. Also, because that's that says a lot about you, because people use that against us, you know, they use that ‘you see there they go again these rebel lesbians’ right?

Susan continues: So. Well, in a way you could say, I don't care what you think about me, but you should care because if you represent the entire community, you get everyone’s name tarnished because you behave a certain way right. So yeah

Susan continues: I think you know, I think you know, we need to, we need to, we need to advocate or advocate and advise our advocates before they go out to advocate. Because sometimes being very aggressive just makes better impact. Go and get started. But it's also a matter of knowing when, where and how to do that. And I think that's the problem that that they're experiencing because millennials just, they just don’t care, about nothing and when they do care, they really care that they can fuck everything else up because they care so much. So it's a matter of finding the balance … with when to use your superpowers. Everybody just retreat, regroup, rethink and come back. 

00;11;07;12 - 00;12;16;01, Carla: Sometimes I wonder whether these frictions would exist if we had models for intergenerational activism, models that recognize and that acknowledge the trauma of our elders as different from but just as real as a trauma of our youth. Models that center bonding between generations, community-being reveling in our rich interiority and allow us to live in the wholesome parts of ourselves where youth can sit at the feet of elders to learn, to be nourished, to challenge boundaries, to experiment and investigate, to upskill? The wholesome parts of ourselves that encourage both the authority and softness in our elders to sit with us, stroke our hair, hold our hands and open our gazes, deliver stories and lessons and revel in their legacy. But here, another elder, our celestial guide, Colin, helps us bridge these gaps through understanding the role youth play in movements to giving helpful context and criticism of his peers.

00;12;16;02 - 00;12;16;10, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Colin Robinson from Sex & Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago with Colin Robinson: To Imagine It's not my job to prescribe, they are living different lives than I led. The priorities that their generation had may not be the ones that mine had. I'll do my best to listen across generations.

CONVERSATION: Larry Chang (Artist, Teacher, Healer, & former Queeribbean and Lucien Govaard (Cari-FLAGS)

00;12;29;03 - 00;12;57;12, Carla: So we offer another gift to you. We are so excited to bring you the first conversation of our podcast between Larry Chang, founder of Jamaica's Gay Freedom Movement, who is also widely recognized as one of the founders of our region's gay rights movement and Lucien Govaard, board member of WVL Grantee Partner, CariFlags and one of the long standing stalwarts of Queeribbean organizing.

00;12;57;14 - 00;15;56;03, Larry Chang: I had gone to college in America, and I studied art because I'm a creative person. I can't hide from that. And at the time Michael Manley was in power, and socialism was you know, the thing of the day and my parents being typical middle class Chiney people in Jamaica were looking to run from the country because, you know, everything is collapsing. And, you know, during that period, thousands of middle class Jamaicans left. They took one of five flights that Michael Manley recommended and left the island, you know, sold their businesses, lock up whatever they had. So, you know, and shipped trailer loads to Miami and Toronto and wherever. 

Larry continues: I was still in school and when it was time for me to graduate, my parents said, ‘don't come back’, but as a patriotic jamaican, my intention was always to come back to Jamaica and because, you know, I was all about nation building, that wonderful, idealistic, noble thing.

Larry continues: But I did make a contract with myself to say that I am going to go back, but only on my terms. And what are my terms? I am not going to live a lie, because I had come out when I was in college in the States. I had went to school in Oakland, California, which is right next to Berkeley, California, which was a hotbed of radicalism.

Larry continues: The Black Panther Party started in Oakland. I attended Black Panther meetings. I heard Huey Newton and all these guys speak. You know, this is a living history. So of course, I filled up with all of these ideas and I said, ‘okay, I will go back to Jamaica, but I'm just going to be myself. I'm not going to tell nobody no lie. I'm not going to hide. I'm not going to pretend. I'm not going to dissemble’ And so that was my my own terms that I set for me to come back to Jamaica, which I did and this was in 1972, and I think within three years I had started, you know, activism, working with GFM.

Larry continues: So that's basically how it started. Carla: Around the 1970s. Okay. Larry continues: Yeah.

00;15;56;05 - 00;17;43;10, Carla: And so, though, the impetus for you, it sounds like ‘I'm coming back to Jamaica, but I have to be my authentic self.’ And how does that translate into activism? That's the question I want to ask, because some people could say, ‘okay, you want to be authentic, self can be an authentic self’. Not everybody says, ‘But then, I need to make space for other people’

Larry: No, what drove me to do activism is purely the focus on self, and so integrity. If I am going to be myself, then I have to create conditions, I have to create a situation where I can be myself. And in doing that for me, then obviously other people will be impacted. They will be the influenced they will be drawn in, they will be whatever.

Larry continues: So it is a purely selfish act. It's not a matter of being community minded then and altruistic. No, no, no. This is a purely selfish act to say that ‘this is me, this is who I am and this is how I am going to live.’ Now, if this helps you, to also make that decision or something similar, then that's wonderful, You know?

Larry continues: So that's basically it, i didn’t do it out of no, to help nobody, no sah. You have to help yourself first, in helping myself other people will be helped.

00;17;43;12 - 00;18;43;01, Carla: I'm, I'm glad you said that because I think a lot of activists who are coming to the work now struggle with that struggle with the idea of saying I'm doing this for myself. There's the understanding that it must be community first and you must be coming to the work from this altruistic place. So I think this thing where you say, ‘No, no, no, me did waah live inna waah place weh suit me hello!’

Larry: That's right. That's right. Yes. So when you're approaching it from that point of view, then it has to be authentic and it is genuine and it is sustainable. If you are doing it for this other reason that is external to you, then any likkle breeze blow you going to run and hide. Yeah. Because you are not doing it from this deep seated self, you know, whatever. Carla: Yeah.

Lucien Govaard (Cari-FLAGS, Regional - Jamaica): Can I jump in here? Carla: Yes! 

00;18;43;03 - 00;20;05;16, Lucien continues: Because I think that that point is very pivotal. Having that conviction that is, that is, that you own, that is yours. And then I think some people, because of who they are and having made that decision, that that is how they would want to live their life, find themselves in situations where they need to defend that decision. And especially, I imagine in those days, if you are the only one in a, in a community and you've made that decision and it seems to be so radical or different from what, what is held as the norm that you're going to be challenged.

Lucien continues: And if you are, somebody was going to then speak up about it. You then suddenly find yourself doing activism, you know, but you're just really saying, ‘Hey, leave me alone, this is me and this might..’ and they're explaining that constantly, but you find yourself, you know, being a public, outspoken person on these issues and you're constantly educating people.

Lucien continues: And so I think there are some being so inherent about, when you're in your own power and in your authenticity, how that sort of, the mirrored side of that is activism.

00;20;05;19 - 00;24;35;21, Larry: I did not set out to be an activist, but just to be myself required that I become an activist. Now, the thing is that in those days, activism was not a word. I didn't know that, that word, it didn’t exist. But, you know, as Eleanor Roosevelt said ‘I just did what I had to do’

Larry continues: Now it’s in hindsight you turned around and said, ‘oh that is activism’. Well okay, that's fine. But at the time we were doing what we were doing, we were just, you know trying to make a space for ourselves.

Larry continues: So nowadays you kids can say, ‘Oh, yes there’s activism, I’m going to be an activist.’ We didn't have that option. Carla: Yeah, that's true because we're coming into the work at that time when people have been doing the work for a long time. Like we're not what, like 50 years into the work. Larry: Precedents have been established. We didn't have any precedents.

Carla: Yes. So from that perspective, at the time when you came to the work, was there anybody that you would have said could have been that elder? And, you know, if you're coming to it like nothing no deh bout, how do you come up with your ideas around organizing? Like how did you come to this is the approach I'm going to take?

Larry: Okay. As I said earlier, we made it up as we went along. It was purely an organic type of development. Um, of course I was trying to massage it along the way because I had been exposed to, you know, organizations abroad and the activity, the same mine groups and radicals and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I kind of had an idea or there was nothing directly myself.

Larry continues: But, you know, you have the idea.

Larry continues: Consciousness, is it? Yeah. And so it's just a matter of, you know, doing what is in front of you to do. Um, the other thing is that you asked me if I looked around to see, well, no, there was nobody. There was a lot of people who had, you know, sex with their own gender and whatnot, But you have to remember, there was no consciousness, you know, to say that I am lesbian or gay are what I would do it. It was not, the word gay wasn't even permitted in, in the Gleaner.

Larry continues: Yeah. And if you are going to talk about anything like this, it was in quotation marks or it was hush hush. It was spoken behind, you know, your, your hands and that this was not anything for polite conversation. It was a totally different social climate. Because you have to remember the context now was that homosexuality is an abomination, It's a sin, it's illegal, it’s dah dah dah, it’s a disease, you know, all of those things were prevalent at that time. So there is nobody in their right mind, no matter how old there were fucking is going to say, ‘I am’, no. So basically that was my task is to come along and be the first one to say ‘I am’. In other words, I was going to come now with a stick and jam it into the ground to say, ‘I am’. And that is really my only claim to, to any kind of, of whatever. And the first one to come and say that. Nothing else. Okay all the other things that came along was only corollary to that. To making a point to say ‘I am’. 

Carla: ‘I am. Larry: I am. 

00;24;35;23 - 00;27;26;27, Carla: So when you are the first, what was it like for you? Because you said ‘that's what I did, I was the first to say I am’ what being the first to say ‘I am’ in a situation where nobody want to say ‘I am’ that is a very significant thing to do. What was it like for you inside of that moment when you said ‘I am’?

Carla continues: What were the responses like and what was that experience like for you personally? Larry: Well the responses were varied, mostly negative, but and surprising, well I shouldn't be surprised because of the prevailing mindset of people in the gay community, themselves, who condemned me by saying, ‘You cannot say that, you are bringing attention to ourselves, you are rocking the boat, leave things as they are.’ That was a huge, huge disappointment. It doesn't really.

Larry continues: But you know that my own community. Well, of course it wasn't a community. These are just people who happen to be, you know, homosexual, they were the worst critiques that I had. And a lot of people stopped talking to me, avoided me because they didn’t want to be seen in my company in the event that they themselves would be tagged.

Larry continues: So there is all of that. It's that whole self denial that holds, you know, whatever. Now, I understand it, I empathize and I sympathize because I knew where they were coming from. But at the same time it was such a blow. At times it was a very lonely journey because nobody wanted to work with you.

Carla: Yeah, I get that. It sounds ironically very similar to what, some of the older activists say of the younger activists today, which is ‘why you blowing it up so much?’. You know ‘why are you making it so loud? you putting it in everybody face, you making people feel uncomfortable.’

Larry: That you see the same lines. Yeah. ‘You don't have to ram it down their throats…why you?’, you know all of that crap? You know, a lot of people, the mindset hasn't changed. So this is why our work never ends. And this is why we have to really focus on our own people first. And in time. That was one of, that was one of GFM’s primary task was to build self consciousness, focus on self, then educate others, the wider community.

00;27;42;27 - 00;28;07;12, Carla: You see when we talk ‘bout inter-generational building and continuity planning? A dem something yah we a talk ‘bout because we just hear from Larry, right? Larry is an artist. Larry is also a leader in the study of Jamaican language. You probably wouldn’t to believe that because Larry is a Chinese man. Lucien, picks up from Larry and he also picks up the story of queer movement in our region from the ‘99 to 2000’s.

00;28;07;14 - 00;33;48;29, Carla: So Lucien now, I want to talk to you about your experience. So you're coming to the work after some of the precedent has been set. You know, after Larry has been… put down the stick and seh ‘I am see me yah’

Lucien: That stick had been planted yes. Carla: Yes, it had been planted. When did you start to the work and what brought you to this work? Lucien: Okay. I have two answers to that, the first is that the work started when I was born, so it would go back to the late eighties, but I took over responsibility somewhere, somewhere in the late 2000s.

Lucien continues: And it's really a tale of two things because I started in youth representation first, that was towards the sort of mid 2000 and then eventually found myself also doing LGBT human rights issues around 2009 moving forward and by 2014 I really had gotten into the regional side of activism, LGBT activism in the Caribbean, and I've been the chair of the steering committee from 2016.

Lucien continues: Yeah, so there are so many things that resonate with me from just listening to Larry. And and I have a couple of thoughts. One of the things that that I find so ironic and this is not just in in LGBT activism because I've done a lot of work in youth representation, I could take a sort of a manifesto and the outcomes of a youth congress from 1985 and circle the relevant issues then and just apply them to today because they're the same.

Lucien continues: Similarly, issues that existed in the 1970s pertaining to quality of life improvement for LGBT persons are the same today, with a few contextual changes but I'm not coming to this as an issue in need of active work improvement work. I'm coming to this as an individual need. They relate to freedom and individual liberties, right? Rights, that that's not going to change, you know, the right to relate to other persons, the right to health and education and to to be your authentic self, those things are not going to change. 

Lucien continues: And so the work going forward was largely the same. It is just the struggle is always contextual. What do you have access to or not? and how does that impact you? That is why we fight. But the issues are the same. And so that the fight that has happened and is happening in Jamaica is maybe contextually different than the fight that I've been part of in Suriname but the issues are the same. You see, in Suriname does not, for example, have buggery laws on the book, never did, and so we're not fighting that particular issue in our context. 

Lucien continues: But the issue is the same. We're not necessarily compared to, to other members of society, able to live life in the same way. For, for a long time there were discrepancies in the law where it related to sexual initiation, there was a higher, a longer sort of a wider each of consent range when it pertained to same sex. So where the age of consent sort of set at 16, I think it used to be 20 or 21 something like that, and so there were those discrepancies and those have now been changed but there’s more work left to do.

Lucien continues: And so it's it's it's interesting to see how much, how similar some of the struggle, some of the issues are. But then at the same time how different the operational context has become and how that then changes how you go about doing and achieving and especially what we have, that is a huge difference with what Larry had. We have Larry to work with, Larry did not have Larry to work with.

Carla: Larry never have no Larry.

Lucien: Larry and many others. Right. So we have that. We have hindsight. Many things that have been tried and failed are lessons. We have those. And they had, they had the advantage of pioneering…which is which is maybe less, less celebratory as I bring it now, as the experience was back then. Pioneering can be quite frustrating and maybe even dangerous.

Lucien continues: Right. But it is. It is. It is nonetheless. It's a wonderful thing that that had occurred.

Sealing this Episode

00;33;49;01 - 00;34;18;23, Carla: A lot of times we talk about intergenerational trauma. Well, we also have to talk about intergenerational healing. And I feel like this is what is happening here. To be able to listen to Larry, who has been holding it down from the seventies, talking to Lucien, who's been carrying that baton from the 2000’s, is something that my soul didn't know it needed.

Carla continues: And I am so excited for the next generation of leaders that's going to come to work in our region.

00;34;18;26 - 00;35;03;07, Carla: This episode was produced by Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated with support from Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Equality Fund, and Global Affairs Canada. Research and Writing by Jacqui Brown, Script Editing and Project Management by Dave-Ann Moses, Editing and Sound by Jherane Patmore and Safiyah Chinere, and Outreach by Ashley Dalley. Remember to head on over the show notes to find the details of the organizers featured in our episode and Rebelwomenlit.com for additional references.

Carla closes: Thank you so much for joining your host, Carla Moore, Under The Sycamore Tree.

0: Sankofa Things

Hello dear audience! This is Jacqui, writer and researcher of “Under the Sycamore Tree.” Here are our show notes for our Episode 0: “Sankofa Tings.” Possible triggers in this episode include climate change, racism, European colonization, neoliberal capitalism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia. 

• Find out more about the Women’s Voice and Leadership - Caribbean partner organizations on our funders’ websites: Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and Equality Fund. Learn more about the Women’s Voice and Leadership - Caribbean partnership more between Astraea and Equality Fund more generally here.  

• Next, you might be interested in the excerpts we read! Here is the booklist from this episode, in the order read in the episode: 

• Olive Senior’s poem “Discovery,” from her over the roofs of the world (Insomniac Press, pg. 44 [2000]; RWL Book Club Pick, August 2020); 

• Curdella Forbes’ A Tall History of Sugar (Akashic Books, 2019; RWL Book Club Pick, April 2020 - see our  podcast episode on the book!); and 

• Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism (trans. from the French by Joan Pinkham, Monthly Review Press, 2000 [1972 (1955)]. 

• You might also be interested in all of the historical content we used! Here are links to check out more: 

• Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit addresses the UN General Assembly (via Resilient Caribbean)’; I became aware of this speech from Bahamian-American artist Tamika Galanis, and her video piece, “A Thousand Points of Light” (2018)

• Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados addresses Opening Ceremony, COP26, 1 Nov 2021

• Interview with David Commissiong: “Farewell to British Colonial Rule”: Barbados Breaks From the Queen as Calls Grow For Reparations,” Democracy Now (NOTE: DemocracyNow! is a very important resource for this podcast! Check out their weekday news and podcast)

• MAURICE BISHOP Live at Medgar Evans College, Brooklyn (29 May 1944 – 19 October 1983),  CARIBBEAN INSIGHT TELEVISION (CITV) 

• Day and another (Appellants) v The Governor of the Cayman Islands and another (Respondents), UKSupreme Court

• Privy Council Rules Against Same-Sex Marriages in Cayman Islands, Radio 90 FM (Jamaica)

• Finally, we sealed this episode with audio from one of Colin Robinson’s final interview in this plane: Sex & Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago with Colin Robinson, Interview with Abby Charles, CaribNationTV

I hope you connect with these texts and enjoy the episode even further! Sincerely, 

Jacks.

Transcript

EPISODE OPENER

00;00;01;16 - 00;00;19;17, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Colin Robinson: I mean, that kind of imagination of the Caribbean we have to destroy because that's what keeps young people oppressed. Young people from the Caribbean going on and going on to the Internet to get that sense that nothing would ever get better in their nations.

[INTRODUCTION] The Series

00;00;19;19 - 00;05;25;17, [SCRIPT] Host Carla Moore: This episode, Sankofa Things is our Episode zero, our foundation because we needed to get Crystal clear before listening to our organizations why in the world their work is needed in the first place, which, how is one to feel about this. Really. Welcome to the Under the Sycamore Tree Podcast produced by Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated and I am your host, Carla Moore of Moore Talk JA.

Carla continues: We are delighted to bring you the stories of two dozen feminist and Queeribbean organizers from Eight Nations of the English speaking Caribbean who are supported by Astraea lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Equality Fund to undertake feminist and queer social justice work in our region. We are a team of Jamaican and Jamaican American women, ranging from our mid-twenties to one of the newest members of the forties club, we’re young professionals, scholars, entrepreneurs and of course, activists.

Carla continues: We're also a literary community. Storytelling is what brought us together. And what brings us to you. We will tell this network of stories in a somewhat circular but holistic way. Our podcast is also a call to action. We are using their stories to name the need for local diasporic and international support that centers, facilitates and sustainably funds this movement of which the WVL grantees Rebel Women Lit, Queerly Stated, and I are a part. 

Carla continues: Be still… Or at least slow down… Breathe mindfully and take note of your somatic alchemy as you join us on this veranda for this podcast. Yes, our podcast will take the form of a virtual audio veranda chat. In Jamaica we love to invite our people into our yards to chat bad, drink nice and just relax with one another.

Carla continues: We hear this is a region wide practice, so we invite you into your yard. Also, as a safe space, so many of our organizations either run safe spaces, previously did, or wish to do so. Safe space is at a premium for the grantee organizations and those whom they serve. We hope that holding space with this podcast will activate your understanding of its preciousness.

Carla’s Welcome!

Carla: So come inna di yaad wid we. Get a snack, make you drink, and let's begin.

[ACT 1] A Foundation

Carla: In African diasporic literature, there is this trope typically presented as a mythological character of the truth teller. The truth teller is overlooked, often a leper or a stillborn or aborted child or a child of unknown origin. In Trinidad, they are called douen, the douen have access to submerged truths key to the mental, physical and spiritual well-being of the entire society.

Carla continues: But are overlooked by humans and used as chattel by those in power. They are not portrayed as children because they are childlike necessarily. Rather, it is because their bodies reflect the form that our societies forget can contain profound truths. The douen do not wait to be acknowledged, and they know that the fact that they are not acknowledged does not make the truth any less true.

Carla continues: Let's say literature is a technology one created to hold the most layered truth of our histories. And let's just say that our work Caribbean feminist and queer justice work contains such truths, and we carry them to you now. You must know how the Caribbean has been present at the beginning of things, very important things, including and so much more than climate change.

[ACT 2] A Tale of Colonial Promiscuity

Carla: Our region could as well be present at what could possibly be the end of these very same things. We will put narrative to work to guide us through these beginnings and possible endings. Stories that help us understand that beginnings and endings are multiple and potential, not foreclosures. And within each, our lessons and portals if you care to seek them out. Let's start with the land itself.

Carla continues: There's 1492, a landing on Guanahani, the indigenous name for what is now called Cat Island, or what Columbus audaciously called “San Salvador” in The Bahamas. His first landing begins what we now call “colonization.” 

00;05;25;19 - 00;06;02;22, [POEM] Ms. Monica Foderingham: 

“But it was gold

on your mind

gold the light

in your eyes

gold the Crown

of the Queen of Spain

…

gold the prize

of your life

the crowning glory

the gateway to heaven

the golden altar

Though I couldn’t help noticing

(this filled me with dread):

silver was your armour

silver the cross of your Lord

silver the steel in your countenance

Silver. The glint of your sword. Silver, the bullet I bite …”

00;06;02;23 - 00;06;35;12, Carla: Barbados, way out in the Eastern Caribbean, was the world’s first sugar colony, and the second official “crown colony” of the United Kingdom. The establishment of the colony of Barbados, can be understood as one of the beginnings of imperialism. Or hear how Curdella Forbes, Jamaican writer and Howard University Professor, retells it:

00;06;35;14 - 00;08;11;23, [LITERARY EXCERPT] Ms. Monica: “Sugar in the boiling houses made the slaves drunk… the shining crystals scooped into vast kegs for shipping to England, the mother country. The grains clung to their skins and got into their eyes and ears and even their secret parts…and that was the reason some could not have children.

Ms. Monica continues: After the long cruel hours in the canepiece, being bitten by cane rat, sugar snake, overseer whip, hot sun, and cane leaf, when they went back to their slave cabins at night there was sometimes nothing to eat but sugar, but they could not eat it without becoming sick, or rather more sick…You will see this in the annals of the sugar plantations, how it was that the bright brown crystals came out…tips of fingers, sometimes whole knuckles, and even whole arms bitten off by the great machines.

Ms. Monica continues: The crystals at first wine-dark in blood, then soakaway to brown when the crushers smoothed them out…and still, long lines of sick and ailing…many young and old suffering from the surfeit or indigestion of sugar. The extent and variety of ailments from saccharine indigestion…were both miraculous and unsurprising…” 

00;08;11;25 - 00;08;41;00, Carla: Thus began a tale of “colonial promiscuity,” of which, one of its possible endings is climate change. Our region, like most of the worlds’ island nations and coastal places, are among the hardest hit by forces unleashed by the piracy of capitalist-based consumption. This means that our leaders have been some of the earliest sounding the alarm, eloquently and ferociously, on the world stage. 

00;08;41;02 - 00;13;19;07, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Former Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit addressing the United Nations: “Secretary-General to the United Nations. President of the General Assembly. Distinguished Heads of Delegations. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen. Mr. President, I come to you straight from the frontline of the war on climate change with physical and emotional difficulty. I have left my bleeding nation to be with you here today. Mr. President, warmer air and sea temperatures have permanently altered the climate between the tropics of cancer and Capricorn.

PM Skerrit continues: Heat is the fuel that takes ordinary storms. Storms we could normally muster or master in our sleep and supercharges them into a devastating force. In the past, we would prepare for one heavy storm a year, now thousands of storms form on a breeze in the mid-Atlantic and line up to pound us with maximum force and fury. Before this century, no other generation had seen more than one Category five hurricane in their lifetime.

PM Skerrit continues: In this century, this has happened twice. And notably, it has happened in the space of just two weeks. And may I add, Mr. President, that we are only midway into this year's hurricane season. Mr. President, to deny climate change, it is to mock thousands of my compatriots who in a few hours without a roof over their heads, will watch the night descend on Dominica in fear of sudden mudslides and what the next hurricane may bring.

PM Skerrit continues: We, as a country and as a region did not start this war against nature. We did not provoke it. The war has come to us. Mr. President, my fellow leaders. There is no more time for conversation. There is little time left for action. When the Caribbean do not produce greenhouse gases or sulfate aerosols. We do not pollute or overfish our oceans.

PM Skerrit continues: We have made no contribution to global warming that can move the needle. But yet we are among the main victims on the front line. Our livelihoods are part of our ecosystem. This is how my people and my country earn and survive. But what is our reality at this moment? Mr. President, we dug graves today in Dominica. We buried loved ones yesterday.

PM Skerrit continues: Dominicans, Mr. President, have been responsible members of the global community. We have co-joined all of the major international battles from the abolition of forced labor to the protection of patents. Yet today, 72,000 Dominicans lie on the front line in a war they did not choose. With extensive casualties from a war that they did not start substantially more funds must therefore be made available to vulnerable countries for loss and damage not to do so.

PM Skerrit continues: Mr. President would be to abandon those who have paid a steep price for what others elsewhere have created. It would be to let 72,000 Dominicans shoulder the world's conscience on climate change on their own. Today, we asked you not to express your sympathies this week, but then hope eyes do not meet next week. Let us spark a thousand points of light.” 

00;13;19;09 - 00;13;53;24, Carla: What does climate change have to do with feminist and queer organizing in our region? Well, first, climate change is a feminist issue. It's a queer issue. Second, in order to hear our full stories, you must know the context in which Caribbean feminist and Queeribbean organizers work. 

[Act 3] A Structural Reading

Carla continues: Let's move next to the people. Another beginning and possibly ending. The Caribbean is also crucial to the invention of blackness.

00;13;53;27 - 00;15;01;23, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Barbados Ambassador David Commissiong on DemocracyNow: “In… in… Barbados, the the seminal slavery laws of the British Empire were the 1661 Barbados Slave Code, which was subsequently taken to Jamaica, and then from Jamaica to the Carolinas and across the the 13 colonies. So Barbados was a center of British power, economic power, political power, military power, cultural power. The historians tell you that around the turn of the 18th century, Barbados, little Barbados was more important in trade to Britain than New England, Carolina, New York and Pennsylvania combined.

Ambassador David Commissiong continues: I mean, it sounds crazy in the 21st century, but back then, sugar was like like a narcotic drug. And so Barbados developed this system of this production of super abundant profits on the basis of the super exploitation … ”

00;15;01;25 - 00;16;49;23, Carla: France’s Code noir was created to regulate black life in Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia and Grenada, among other places. This tale, which can also be called how Blackness was invented, has a few possible endings. One of them is Revolution. Note our Hemisphere’s History, two of the most famous revolutions the world over happened here. One of the earliest underworld's only successful slave rebellion, the Haitian Revolution.

Carla continues: And one of the latest, the Cuban. Another possible ending is liberation. See Barbados becoming our region’s latest republic birthed through black women with a black woman Prime minister in Mia Mottley, a black woman president, Her Excellency Sandra Mason and their newest national hero The right. Excellent Robyn Rihanna Fenty. Now let's turn to governments, a.k.a. Babylon. The story of our region includes one of the beginnings of fascism, which Martinique, poet, politician and co-founder of Négritude, Aime Cesaire famously called our attention to in his 1955 a discourse on colonialism.

Carla continues: Cesaire reorients our understanding of fascism in the 21st century. He reminds us that European colonizers, all of them, needed a testing ground for their fascist politics and their colonies, were their labs. Cesaire’s thoughts brings us to another beginning. This time, one of the origins of post-colonial studies.

00;16;49;25 - 00;17;35;22, [ESSAY EXCERPT] Ms. Monica: “What fundamentally is colonization? To agree on what it is not. Neither evangelization nor philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease and tyranny. Nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law to admit once and for all appetite and force, at which at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged for internal reasons to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.”

00;17;35;24 - 00;18;14;03, Carla: So we find ourselves back at this beginning. Colonialism and imperialism and the economic models spawned from them. Back at this beginning, there's a portal that leads not to an ending, but tumbling headlong into the potentially false notion of independent nation states. Maurice Bishop, speaking to us from the past. Also really powerful, illustrates this Though many of us will likely be incredibly familiar with this speech, it's worth injecting an extended version of his specific word.

00;18;14;06 - 00;20;57;29, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Maurice Bishop Medgar Evers College address: “Our people, therefore, sisters and brothers, have a greater and deeper understanding of what the revolution and means and what it has brought to them. They certainly understand very, very clearly that when some people attack us on the ground of human rights, when some people attack us on the ground of constituting a threat to the national security of other countries, our people understand that is foolishness, they know the real reason has to do with the fact of the revolution and the benefits that a revolution are bringing to the people of our country.

Maurice Bishop continues: The real reason for all of this hostility is because some perceive that what is happening in Grenada can lead to a new socio economic and political path of development.

Maurice Bishop continues: They give all kinds of reasons and excuses, some of them credible, some utter rubbish. There's an interesting one that we saw very recently in a secret report of the State Department. I want to tell you about that one so you can reflect on that one. That secret report made this point that Grenada is different to Cuba and Nicaragua, and the Grenada revolution is in one sense even worse, I’m using their language, than the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions, because the people of Grenada, and the leadership of Grenada, speaks English and therefore can communicate directly to the people of the United States.

Maurice Bishop continues: I can see from your applause, sisters and brothers, that you agree with the report. But I want to tell you what that same report also said and said. That also made us very dangerous, and that is that the people of Grenada and the leadership of Grenada are predominantly black. They're said that 95% of our population is black, and they had a correct statistic. And if we have 95% of predominantly African origin in our country, then we can have a dangerous appeal to 30 million Black people in the United States.

00;20;58;01 - 00;22;14;05, Carla: The independent black postcolonial Republic. What makes a nation independent? Control of their laws, economic and geopolitical agency. Do you feel our nations have these? Let's take our laws, for example. The legislative foundation for our independent nations is savings clauses transferring colonial laws intact to form our legal, legislative and institutional independence. What they left largely unreformed were the police and even many aspects of the judiciary.

Carla continues: This, in addition to the large parts of our economies, left intact from slave times. How do feminist and queer organizing happen when even your governments do not have independence and full agency? But if you hop back into this portal, it can empty you all. It's at one of two places. First, you'll stop at the justice that is available to us.

Carla continues: Let's return to David Commissiong Bajan Ambassador to CARICOM.

00;22;14;07 - 00;23;15;07, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Ambassador David Commissiong: “I would say I'm 65 years overdue. It really should have happened on the 30th of November 1966, when Barbados became an independent country. But back then, for whatever reasons and you know, there are many reasons we can speculate about, we made two compromises on our constitutional sovereignty and independence. We corrected one compromise in 2005 when we broke our legal system away from the British Privy Council and installed our Caribbean Court of Justice as our highest national court.

Ambassador Commissiong: And so we we dealt with the second compromise on Monday when we moved away not just from the Queen, but also from the concept, from any concept of hereditary rule…installed our own native president, but also a precedent always put in place by a democratic process.”

00;23;15;10 - 00;23;56;09, Carla: Where the CCJ and other local courts have made strides on justice and equality. The Crown Court has just as often insisted that Caribbean citizens do not deserve the same rights as British citizens or citizens of any democracy, for that matter. Consider the 2018 case of Day versus the government of the Cayman Islands. We'll hear how Cayman's highest court decided this case, and then you'll hear the final judgment on the case, as decided from Britain by the UK private court, which just so happens to be the highest judicial authority for most of the English speaking Caribbean.

00;23;56;11 - 00;26;05;07, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] from Nationwide News: “A recent ruling by the Privy Council in relation to same sex marriages in the Cayman Islands has dealt a blow to lobby groups across the region that want to have the buggery law struck down. [Lord Sales gives the judgement of the board] ‘This is an appeal from the Cayman Islands. The point in issue is whether the constitution of the Cayman Islands confers a constitutional right to legal recognition of same sex marriages, which cannot be abrogated by the legislature.’” 

[Nationwide News reporter William Mitchell] “A judge in Cayman initially ruled in the couple's favor in March 2019, but it was later struck down on appeal by Cayman's government. The matter was then brought to the Privy Council, where the coincided with the government. [Lord Sales reading the judgement of the board] ‘This depends upon the interpretation of the provisions of the Bill of Rights set out in the Constitution. The appellants are two women who are in a committed relationship and wish to enter into a same sex marriage, recognized then law. In 2018, they were refused a license to marry on the grounds that the marriage law in the Cayman Islands defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.’”

[Nationwide News reporter William Mitchell] “In expanding its decision, the Privy Council said Cayman's Bill of Rights states that a marriage is illegal when it's between two people of opposite sex is, the Privy Council says, to interpret that section of the Bill of Rights in any other way would undermine the coherence of the entire bill. [Lord Sales reading the judgement of the board] ‘Rather than the right of marriage. The European Court has held that the right to respect for family and private life creates a right for same sex couples to seek other forms of legal recognition for their relationships. The Cayman Islands government accepts that the equivalent provision in the Bill of Rights has the same effect. Accordingly, a form of civil partnership recognized in law is available for same sex couples in the Cayman Islands, and there is constitutional protection for this.’” 

[Nationwide News reporter William Mitchell] “The Privy Council points out that its ruling doesn't prevent Cayman's lawmakers from bringing legislation to recognize same sex marriages.”

00;26;05;10 - 00;28;07;05, Carla: This Crown Court ruling comes five years after a CCJ ruling overturning Victorian era vagrancy and cross-dressing laws that were used to criminalize trans and queer persons. This precedent was set by members of Guyana Trans United who were the lead plaintiffs on the case. You'll learn more about this case in the episode: Setting Precedent, positive rights. And here's another portal funding.

Carla continues: What we want to know truly is does funding facilitate or arrest our work truly, hell, like not just our work. What about us? Or visions? Those conversations, the actually generative, you know kind of lush. You know those conversations. How precisely does it differ from a colonial state of affairs? If the only way it differs is that it allows us to feel like we have more control over our future, a feeling not manifested in our collective realities?

Carla continues: What are we to do? What of entrepreneurship and collectivities? Where do these belong in our work? The vast majority of funding for social justice work, queer liberation and feminist organizing comes from abroad, namely the United States, Canada, and the European Union, collectively and individually. Then there are the International multilateral organizations housed in and directed by these same countries and to a lesser extent, China and Japan.

Carla continues: Note the irony that the countries responsible for the frameworks of our oppression, if not its ongoing daily implementation, are the ones who set our justice agendas.

00;28;07;08 - 00;28;41;09, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley addressing COP26 November 2021: “Our world, my friends, stands at a fork in the road. One no less significant than when the United Nations was formed in 1945. But then the majority of our countries here did not exist. We exist? No. The difference is we want to exist 100 years from now. The leaders of today, not 2030, not 2050, must make this choice. It is in our hands and our people and our planet need it more than ever.” 

00;28;41;11 - 00;29;24;02, Carla: And that was Mia Mottley addressing the COP26 opening ceremony in November 2021. Y'all, Mia cannot save the world. 

[Act 4] The Map of our Podcast

Carla: Finally, I will not be your only guide. Let's say I'll be your Earth side guide. We will turn to Colin Robinson, a giant of Queeribbean organizing who is now in the ancestral realm because it's time to take note of who is often missing our indigenous communities and our disabled communities. Colin’s words from one of his last interviews before his transition will have to hold us and keep us. For now.

00;29;24;04 - 00;30;19;12, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Colin Robinson, from Sex & Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago with Colin Robinson: We had a program that about seven gay deaf people came to because one of our peer leaders signed. Because otherwise they wouldn't have been able to understand what was going on. And we asked them, what's the thing that you could do that would have the biggest impact on homophobia in deaf communities? And you know what they said, right? No clue. When straight - when hearing people sorry learned to sign, right? Because, you know, you can't be talking to your doctor about how you get the STI or asking them difficult questions, him or her difficult questions if it’s the church interpreter you're relying on. You can't go to an LGBTI social event if nobody could talk to you.

00;30;19;14 - 00;31;37;28, Carla: We will be visiting with indigenous women's groups. There will be further portals we will need to traverse to experience Caribbean Indigeniety, but not so many as you might think. As one of our participants reminded us, the indigenous Caribbean is not an alternate universe. Indigenous folks have been living in the same Caribbean as you and I, but as you travel the portals that link us with the indigenous peoples and inheritance of our region, you will come to rethink our relationship to land and entitlement by.

Carla continues: But just but, what if we could fly from this free fall? You know what, say we are flying? We've flown so high that it might be nice to look down. No following Kei’s instructions “First, you must imagine the sky, blue and cloudless if that helps, or else the luminously black spread of night. Next - and this is the important bit - you must imagine yourself inside it. Inside the sky, floating beside me….Now focus…”

00;31;38;01 - 00;37;49;28, Carla: Supported like this, just so, we can make out our Sea - the Caribbean Sea. If we look clearly, and in just the right light, we can make out the map of Queeribbean and feminist organizing in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Carla outlines our map: Look to the northwest corner of the lands ringing the Sea. Find Belize, planted on the Yucatan peninsula’s eastern end like the cool cool side of a brick wall at midday. Belize, which marks the northernmost boundary of our podcast, is where the women of POWA dedicate themselves to women’s and family empowerment and reproductive health. So too do PETAL and Our Circle, who advocate for Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer (which we’ll refer to as “LBQ” ) womxn across the nation. You’ll also find Toledo Maya Women’s Council, an indigenous group, working toward girl’s and women’s empowerment in the Toledo District in southern Belize. 

Carla continues with our map: Now, glide due east from Belize and pass over the Cayman Islands to Jamaica. Jamaica is homebase to one of the region’s oldest queer advocacy groups, Cari-FLAGS, as well as one of our region’s newest and boldest LBQ groups, WE-Change. Jamaica is also home to EVE for Life, an organization dedicated to lifting up and guiding teen mothers, as well as pushing forward youth sexual and reproductive health education.

Carla continues with our map: Next, soar over to the northeast edge of our Sea; cruise east past Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, all of the Virgins Islands, and then slightly southeast past St. Kitts and Nevis to Antigua and Barbuda. Here, the Caribbean Institute of Women in Leadership, or CIWiL, monitors, strengthens and increases women’s political participation and leadership across our region. Integrated Health Outreach works at the intersection of sustainability and gender empowerment to build a holistic approach to boosting women and girls’ mental health. Intersect, which rounds out our Antigua and Barbuda contingent, uses digital/cyber-feminist activism as a means of subverting unequal power relations, engaging Antiguans and Barbudans and people across the Caribbean region on a range of gender-related topics, including through their digital literary journal. 

Carla continues with our map: Now come back slightly east, following the trail of the lesser Antilles south to Saint Lucia. Here, Helen’s Daughters empowers women farmers, Girls of a Feather supports girls leaving the juvenile correction system, and Raise Your Voice Saint Lucia centers women and children in their support of those who experience gender-based violence.

Carla continues with our map: Hop and skip further down the island chain to Grenada, where we’ll stop to hear from Sweetwater Foundation. From this, their base in the southwestern corner of our regional ring, they are undertaking a region-wide survey of childhood sexual assault.

Carla continues with our map: Trace your sight south past Trinidad and Tobago and then east, to the center of South America’s northernmost coast. We’ll hear from trailblazers all-round - starting with two more of our region’s earliest queer advocacy groups - Guyana Rainbow Foundation, also known as GuyBow, and Guyana Trans United, the organization who pursued the court case leading to a regional repeal of buggery laws through the Caribbean Court of Justice. [Stick a pin here. You may be wondering how far-reaching this regional precedent is. Well, back to the independence available to our nations - there are nations for whom their highest judicial authority remains the Crown Court. For these nations, buggery laws are still on the books.] Then we’ll leave Guyana’s coast and move into the Amazon river basin to hear from indigenous-led groups, the Makushi Research Unit and Wapichan Women’s Movement. 

Carla continues with our map: And finally, here we are at the southeastern edge of the Caribbean, floating above Suriname. This is where SUCOS or Suriname Coalition of Sex Workers, and the LBQ women’s and family advocacy group, Women’s Way, put in work. 

Carla closes our map: If you take a deep, deep breath now, hold it, and then exhale it out, we expect you’ll land steady, on sturdy footing, back in center. Wherever in the Caribbean, or elsewhere, that is for you.

[Act 5] Wrapping Up

Carla continues: Let me take us back to Colin, speaking near the end of his most recent life to seal this episode.

00;37;50;01 - 00;38;58;00, [ARCHIVAL AUDIO] Colin Robinson, from Sex & Gender Justice in Trinidad and Tobago with Colin Robinson: “Then there's this persistent narrative that we tend to paint and we love to embrace that we're backward. You know, that we homophobic ‘is the culture, is the culture’, and we need to break that sense of ourselves. We need to break that sense of our governments. We need to break that sense because it’s a stereotype it’s a racist type. I've seen it operate as a racist stereotype internationally. How the Caribbean is this deep, dark place of homophobia where I mean, that kind of imagination of the Caribbean. We have to destroy it because that's what keeps young people oppressed. Because when young people are struggling, you know, in their families, in their homes with this sense of, you know, being trans or these sexual attractions, you know, happening these things happening in their bodies, but not along with their words, and they would turn to the Internet and on the Internet, they would find these crushing representations of the places that they live.”

00;38;58;03 - 00;40;53;14, Carla: We have ten more episodes for you, each dedicated to themes related to the work of Caribbean feminist and queer organizing, eldership, justice and judicial precedents, Indigenous youth, families, communities, feminist leadership making money and self-possessed selfhood. Each of our organizers gifted something for the veranda. A thought, an item or a wish, which we'll plant under the sycamore tree to guide or continue our work, and the generations to come.

Carla continues: Also to honor our elders and forebearers who deserve to retire and rest well. We would like to thank Jacqui’s, Monica Foderingham for reading copiously to Jacqui and their sisters when they were little and for reading to us now, big up nice, clean Ms. Monica. Yeah, nice clean you. You heard in order, passages from Olive Senior’s poem “Discovery”, Curdella Forbes’ A Tall History of Sugar, Kei Miller’s, AugustTown,  and Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.

[CREDITS] Carla: This episode was produced by Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated with support from Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Equality Fund, and Global Affairs Canada. Research and Writing by Jacqui Brown, Script Editing and Project Management by Dave-Ann Moses, editing and sound by Jherane Patmore and Safiyah Chinere, and Outreach by Ashley Dalley. Remember to head on over to the show notes to find the details of the organizers featured in our episode and Rebelwomenlit.com for additional references.

Thank you so much for joining me. Your host, Carla Moore, Under The Sycamore Tree … 

Come Under The Sycamore Tree

Release Date: May 2nd 2023

Welcome to the “Under the Sycamore Tree” podcast, produced by Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated and hosted by Carla Moore of Moore Talk JA. We are delighted (!) to bring you the stories of two dozen feminist and Queeribbean organizers from eight nations across the Caribbean, who represent the Women’s Voice and Leadership - Caribbean grantee organizations of Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Equality Fund. This project was made possible in partnership with Global Affairs Canada.

We’re a literary community – storytelling is what brought us together and what brings us to you. We will tell this network of stories in a somewhat circular, but holistic way. Our podcast is also a call to action – we are using their stories to name the need for local, diasporic, and international support that centers, facilitates, and sustainably funds this movement, of which the WVL grantees, Rebel Women Lit, Queerly Stated, and our host Carla, are a part.

Join us starting Tuesday, May 2, 2023, with the release of our Episode 0: “Sankofa Tings.” Like, rate, subscribe, review! Please! We want this podcast to reach as many as it can. 

Episodes

Our podcast has a total of 11 episodes (0 - 10), which will be released in two batches. Our first batch will be episodes 0 - 5, which will be released weekly beginning on May 2, 2023. Our second batch of episodes, 6 - 10, will be released after a short summer break. Each episode is dedicated to a theme related to the work of Caribbean feminist and queer organizing: Eldership, Justice and Judicial.

Precedents, Youth, Families, Queer Communities, Feminist Leadership, Sex worker organizing, Feminist-led agriculture, and Caribbean Indigeneity and rematriation.

Other Things

• Check out our show notes! We did so much research for this podcast and our show notes are where we leave our cookie crumbs from each episode! There is so much which didn’t make it into the episodes, so you’ll find more to pursue in the notes.

• Please review our trigger warnings before listening to each episode. They are listed in the episode description, as well as the notes and on our webpage. 

• You might notice a mix of American and British English writing conventions (months and day positions switched in dates; “z’s” in place of “s’s” and vice versa, color and colour…) This is because we are a diasporic team, and our writer just so happens to be one of the American. We hope you will excuse / enjoy this bit of diasporic happenings.

Our Team!

• Carla Moore is our host! Carla Moore is major! In addition she is an Artist, Activist, Academic, and Alchemist with a two-decade body of work in community and personal transformation. She advocates for radical authenticity and decolonised freedom through her  work as a public speaker, international consultant host,  researcher, content creator,  diversity equity and inclusion trainer, master facilitator, curriculum developer, gender specialist, human rights activist,  author and transformational life coach. Visit her website, and follow her movements on Twitter and Instagram @mooretalkja. Also, hire her!

• Our Producer is Dave-Ann Moses! Dave-Ann is a Jamaican cultural organizer and community builder. She is a part of Rebel Women Lit and WE Change JA, as well as Founder of Queerly Stated, a Queeribbean Media House! Follow her movements via Queerly Stated on Twitter and Instagram @QueerlyStatedJA.  

• Our Writer and Researcher is Jacqui Brown! Jacqui is a Jamaican-American cultural organizer and apprentice literary scholar. Jacqui is a part of Rebel Women Lit and Queerly Stated, is the Special Projects Lead for The Luminal Theater (A Black Nomadic Arthouse Cinema), and is pursuing a Doctoral degree in Comparative Literature. 

• Our Outreach Coordinator is Ashley Dalley! Ashley is a Jamaican cultural producer. She is co-host of RWL’s other podcast, “Like a Real Book Club.”

• Our Executive Producer and Editor is Jherane Patmore, Founder of Rebel Women Lit. Visit Rebel Women Lit’s website, as well as their Twitter and Instagram @RebelWomenLit!

• Our Editor is Safiyah Chiniere, Jamaican-American filmmaker, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. Visit her website and YouTube channel @SafiyahChiniere to take in more of her work. Also, hire her!

I hope you connect with these texts and enjoy the episode even further!

Sincerely; We see you,  

Jacks.