Formed in 1973, the New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation, or New JEWEL Movement (NJM) grew out of the Black Power politics and liberation of black nations that began in the 1960s. The March 1979 overthrow of Sir Eric Gairy (who led the country after it gained independence from Britain in 1974) led by Maurice Bishop is regarded as the first successful revolution in Caribbean since Fidel Castro ousted Batista in 1959.
| MANIFESTO OF THE NEW JEWEL MOVEMENT FOR POWER TO THE PEOPLE AND FOR ACHIEVING REAL INDEPENDENCE FOR GRENADA, CARRIACOU, PETIT MARTINIQUE AND THE GRENADIAN GRENADINES (1973) ALL THIS HAS GOT TO STOP Introduction The people are being cheated and have been cheated for too long–cheated by both parties, for over twenty years. Nobody is asking what the people want. We suffer low wages and higher cost of living while the politicians get richer, live in bigger houses and drive around in even bigger cars. The government has done nothing to help people build decent houses; most people still have to walk miles to get water to drink after 22 years of politicians. If we fall sick we catch hell to get quick and cheap medical treatment. Half of us can’t find steady work. The place is getting from bad to worse every day-except for the politicians (just look at how they dress and how they move around). The police are being used in politics these days and people are getting more and more blows from them. Government workers who don’t toe the Gairy line are getting fired left and right. “Even the magistrates better look out!” The government has no idea how to improve agriculture, how to set up industries, how to improve housing, health, education and general well-being of the people. They have no ideas for helping the people. All they know is how to take the people’s money for themselves, while the people scrape and scrunt for a living. We believe that the main concern of us all is to (1) prevent the daily rise in prices of all our food and clothes and other essentials (it is unbelievable but that the price you can get for a pound of cocoa can’t buy a half-pound of fish) and (2) develop a concrete program for raising the standard of housing, living, education, health, food and recreation for all the people The present situation we face is that we are forced to live in jammed-up, rundown, unpainted houses without toilet and bath, without running water, very poor roads, overcrowded schools where our children can’t get a decent education, and without any proper bus service. There is almost no ambulance service in case of illness. We can’t afford the cost of food to feed our children properly and this makes it easier for them to catch all kinds of illnesses. There are very few places near home for recreation. All we have is the rumshop to drown our troubles. It’s almost impossible to buy clothes or shoes these days. The prices are ridiculous. Twenty years of the GNP and the GULP have made us believe that there is no way out of this blasted mess. BUT THERE IS, and the time is NOW to do something about it. What we want to do in this Manifesto is to give a rough idea of a way out. We can start by looking at some of the ways in which we can set about to wipe out poverty in Grenada. |