Makandal Daaga on Monday appealed to the people of Laventille to take charge of their lives and their community by voting out the People's national Movement.The NJAC leader, who is the opposition candidate for Laventille West, was speaking at a people's Partnership meeting in the community.
"Many of us are treated as animals...treated by politicians as if we are here to beg...and even when we put them in office, they have no respect for our area," he said. Daaga said the people of Laventille have been denied opportunities and kicked around "because they were born behind the bridge."
He said Laventille has a significant history going back to slavery as a place to which to run to escape oppression. "When we couldn't even beat pan in town, there is only one place we run to...behind the bridge."
He added, "And now these people treating us with scorn when they should be honouring us...they leave us unemployed and when we complain they call us vagabonds...they treat our women as prostitutes...they leave our young men hungry.
"Any country that does not feed its young ones, any country that does not take care of its women will always have crime...It hurts me that young men are being forced into crime in order to survive," he said.
"Crime comes out of poverty...the failure of the government to protect its children," he said adding that when the government fails in its duty people have nowhere to turn but to a life of crime.
And he said a caring government should make sure than prisons are designed to rehabilitate those who have committed crimes"
Daaga condemned Prime Minister Manning for not caring about people, refusing to hear the pleas of people of La Brea who have begged the government not to put a smelter in their community. He said Manning has also turned a deaf ear to the plight of fishermen by destroying fish habitat.
Daaga promised that the People's Parnership would wage a war on poverty "like you have never seen before".
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