Shooting the messenger and yourself

PEOPLE HAVE all sorts of opinions about YouTuber "Chris Must List."

“He only profits off impoverished communities by exploiting their sufferings.”

“All-dem-so does only go to Third World countries. They wooden do dat in dey own country.”

To be fair, there were also more considered perspectives, from those who warned of the implications of "List’s" arrest after profiling the gangster’s paradise. Many pointed out that he was merely a mirror, reflecting the unvarnished “Trini sweetness.”

Simply put, this YouTuber was hoisted on a pike at the gates to the city to serve as a warning to others like him who would travel to this country to show up the police service and the Government with unflattering truths on the internets.

This precedent opens the door for local TikTokkers to be charged with sedition for criticising the police and the Government and exposing corruption. Here’s another unanswered question: if a local media house does the same coverage, would our journalists be arrested under the same legislation?

Anyone shocked by what they saw in those YouTube videos hasn’t been paying attention. If you can live in this country gleefully ignorant of our irrevocable slide into this Hadean stew of criminality, chaos and political malevolence, then you lead a truly charmed life.

Unlike most folks who need the numbing distractions of non-stop eating, drinking, feteing, travelling, foodie reviews and liming just to forget the bottle-and-spoon, steady chip-chip-chip towards our dystopian futures, others are somehow immune to the blight stalking us in this murdertopia.

"Chris Must List" is probably contemplating his next video – Escape from Paradise! My money’s on 100K views in the first hour.

Many, however, probably missed an important message in his videos. In an interview, a young man perfectly expressed one origin story of the community carbuncles we’d rather not hear about. “We are a country that has natural resources; we have pitch, we have natural gas, we have oil…only the government works together and achieves together for their benefits. I want them to look into certain communities where youths are hungry.”

It’s a story that’s been told in many ways and sloughed off by politicians and the wider society in many more still.

The masked, gun-toting hoodlums who were fodder for that YouTuber’s content are the inevitable products of a trajectory I witnessed at least 30 years ago.

The Harp, Trou Macaque, John John, Never Dirty, Canada and others were gestating the brood that would create the nihilist ethos of current youth culture. The ultra-violence of today is the completion of a long arc that could easily have been reset at any time. The story then foretold the terrors now: wanton neglect, the absence of opportunities and no direction for young men and women unprepared for life.

How can communities with raw sewage in their streets, mountains of uncollected garbage and zero employment produce anything other than enmity and desperation?

These citizens have been used and spat out like a sucked mango seed by politicians and yet their devotion to party burns as intensely as their suffering for it. Still, that slavish loyalty parallels the diehard party fealty half the population has. That’s right. Most voters are the same and condemning people in forgotten communities for practising these warped ways of faith is the finest hypocrisy there is.

Now I can hear people winding up, you’re excusing criminality and offering absolution for gangsterism. I am not. Crime is a choice, but some choices are easier than others when options are between none and nada.

When I was very young something interesting was happening in Port of Spain. The Drag Mall on Frederick Street, which, to many, was an unsightly warren of shacks, was also an incubator for countless black-owned businesses. In the 80s Rasta sandals were
de rigueur; everyone wanted a pair. Master Rasta craftsmen were handcrafting this footwear in the Drag. There were seamstresses, tailors, folks selling ital food – you name it.

Drag Mall wasn’t without problems, but its function as an engine of opportunity and agency for inner-city folks was undeniable. That place wasn’t just a shanty town, it was an expression of Afrocentric culture and entrepreneurship.

Because politics will always trump people, it was smothered in the crib.

"Chris Must List’s" videos exposed more than gang culture; they showed how socio-economic decay, political manipulation and inequity are all the genetic strands of the supervillains feasting on each other and the wider society. Pulling down every last YouTube video that tells the truth won’t make it any less so.