My colleague the reggae singer Sams’k le Jah and myself have been meeting people, hosting debates and conferences, visiting universities, outside of the capital, meeting students and sparking political debate. We organized politically engaged concerts. Little by little, it started to rise; there is now a political awareness within the youth. We got the idea to transform all these various disorganized actions we were taking into a more formal framework, a structure like the Balai Citoyen. We were inspired by movements like Y’en a marre in Senegal but also more generally by all the movements that contributed to reinforce the class struggle, as well as 1970s movements like the Black Power, Blaxploitation and Black Panthers. They are inspiring because they were carried out by people who got involved in a mission theoretically designed for citizens who are already knowledgeable about politics. But we think that it is a mistake to let the political class dominate the political scene. Workers, farmers, students, store-keepers, craftsmen, artists must take over the political field. They have to understand the political game and make the government, who is the people’s employee, feel a form of pressure, a sword of Damocles over its head. The government must be aware that if it goes against the people’s interests, it will lose the next election. For years, there has been a disinterest about politics that made the bad situation we currently live in possible.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 14:08:42 +0000
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