All hail Walter, a great Guyanese.

 

Burnham, Green and the PNC robbed the nation of a man like this who believed in national and racial unity.

 

Read his pamphlet: "The Three Trials of Arnold Rampersaud."

A GREAT man he was indeed.

 

I wonder if Roopnarine even remember the great Rodney or he is too busy fulling his pocket!!!!!!!

A great Guyanese. His dream for working class unity lives on forever. Guyana will only move forward when there is unity among the races and democracy at all levels of society, including political parties. He should be awarded the highest honor for his work in Guyana and the world.

People's power, no dictator.

I doan know why Rodney is so worshipped. I get it. He fought against a dictatorship and made some good speeches. But he was still never a national figure. He was at heart a Black nationalist and a Marxist. That's not really the makings of the kind of man Guyana needed. What was he gonna do in office? Be truer to marxism/communism than Burnham?

P.S...I always find it quaint how Guyanese people (Blacks and Indians) deify anyone in politics no matter how flawed or dangerously flawed. Jim Jones obviously did not bring the Gospel of Cultism to Guyana. We seem to have invented it.

He certainly does!  Wow, did not know he got his Phd at 24.   He had a son in my sister's class at QC, very smart kid. 

Never a national figure?  How do you draw that conclusion?  The man was an international figure much less a national figure.  Damn I was a communist/socialist/marxist in those days.  Today I consider myself a conservative liberal, what does that mean?

 

Wow! A Black guy Alunatic Gyal doesn't automatically hate. Then again he is safely deceased and his corpse is useful to the PPP to prove how bad of a man Burnham really was.

That was one of the reason I looked up to him.  

I do not know Rodney. Charlie Cassato took me a couple times to freedom house and other venue to listen to him. I was a disinterested 16 year old.
He was indeed charismatic and spoke fluidly ( I hate people who punctuate their speech with ahm....yes...you know....aaah etc) as I hate parenthetical sentences. As you know, I very seldom do it.

 

Rodney certainly was bright but his skill in organizing protests to the administration was not very good. He had the masses in his arms but failed to meet the bar of a Ghandi or a Dr King. He reached for a weapon without realizing he had the most powerful one in his grasp....ability to move people by the hundreds to particular ends.

 

 

So this is a little story I have to share that I though was amusing.

 

Walter just came back to Guyana and was establishing himself in Guyanese politics.  Anyway, there was a meeting at Kitty Market Square where he was presenting a lot of historical facts and there was this PNC lady heckling him all the time "yuk know wha yuh talking bout" so at one point Walter stopped and said "I speak as a historian."  You could have heard a pin drop...needless to say the lady disappeared.

Another story:

 

In the height of the struggle we were holding a protest without permission in Kitty  and the police took after Walter.  Walter took off and left them in his shadows.  I saw this.  Burnham use to make joke abut this incident saying that Walter will represent Guyana at the Olympics.

He commanded a lot of respect and had all the young folks energized with Politics.

Gotta agree that Rodney was a Black Nationalist but a South-South Third-Worldist socialist rather than the classic Soviet style or Maoist style socialist. He was more of a Black Power advocate for Blacks disadvantaged all over the world.

 

I wonder why Nehru was not concerned that the PPP was all for Rodney to be banished and the Committee of Inquiry never had the massalla in it.

Not sure what you are talking about here.  I was there for every protest.  There were significant numbers for all protests.  Burnham did not use to give permission for protests marches and frankly that was one of the reasons why the protests were successful.  Towards the end Burnham did start giving permission and things started to fizzle.

As I said, I was there as a viewer. I saw the adoration, the belief that ends can be achieved in standing up to a brutal regime. However, that was not maximized and he got himself blown up so obviously his gains tho significant in showing the regime could be stared down was otherwise marginal. Burnham went on to lord over us for another 10 years.

You know politics really never came up during the protests.  It was all about unifying to get rid of Burnham.  It was know that Walter had socialist ideology, however...and frankly that was one of the reasons I liked him 

I just finished listening to dub poet Linton Johnson Tribute to Rodney. Rodney Lives.

Wonder what happened to the inquiry into his death....army people might have been involved, there were so many speculations, even our Honorable Granger was mentioned at one point.  We probably will never have answers. 

So what should he have done better?  Take the Moses approach?  Yuh slap meh I gun turn and give you the other side? Or tek it and do not retaliate? Or the Jagan approach...wait it out?

A measure of a figure's stature is his or her legacy.

We can ask of Burnham's legacy; Jagan's legacy; Rodney's legacy; Jagdeo's legacy. In the answers we will see what long-lasting impact each had - good or bad. Which legacy still survives in all aspects - mores, values, continuance,etc.

 

Storm may have a point of a short-lived impact by Rodney. Did his ideas or work fuel a change of government. While it's early you can even throw in Nagamaootoo's bold coalition initiative as it changed a government. Events like this would put Rodney's perspective in place. [That's not as far-fetched as it sounds]. Maybe the PPP-PNC collusion on the Rodney question was too much for him to impact Guyanese lives.

I initially supported that inquiry but with the revelations about Shaun Samaroo's role I think it was more and inquisition by the PPP rather than inquiry.  A lot of money wasted.

 

Ah tru tru ting yuh seh deh gyal. Me been see duh meself. Me barn in 82 but meh been deh deh in 79 in Ghargetung when Granger personally took a stick of dynamite and put am in Rodney bukta dah very marnin. Next ting yuh know gyal, meh read ah Chraanickle de man done geh blow up.

As usual in GY, time and money wasted and nothing accomplished!

That was not possible. I do not know what could be done or how it could be done. I do know it was a revolution that got aborted before it became viable.

 

Revolutionary changes occur only if one is able to destabilize belief in a system so much it is no longer credible and only overturning it is the becomes the status quo.  Maybe he could have organized organized sit ins, education and information meet ups etc with the specific target at crippling the regime without going to war with it. I do not know but all I know is he was a flash of brilliant light then gone like a snowflake on the river.

The main thing Rodney PROVED was that African and Indians could work together for a common good.  He STARTED the healing and gave significance to the WPA.  Although I must say that the WPA turned out to be useless without Rodney.

Yesterday's newspaper [not Guyana Times] said the Rodney COI will hold one more session soon and will be given one month to prepare and submit its report to President David Granger.

@VVP, this thread brings back memories. I believe our paths might have crossed. I ignored the unwritten edict of my PPP and attended almost all the WPA meetings in Georgetown and Kitty. D'Urban Street & Louisa Row, Merriman's Mall, Kitty Market Square, etc. I got tear-gassed at Merriman's Mall and witnessed a policeman crack Eze Rockcliff's head with a baton. I was on Campbell Avenue the day a WPA meeting was planned without police permission and witnessed partly disguised Rodney arriving on a dray cart. When the licks started sharing a policeman grabbed my arm and was about to shove me in a van with some other young men on the railway line. As a ruse, I pointed to a tamarind tree at the corner of Barr & Lamaha Sts and told the policeman I lived there and that I was simply on my way home. He released me. Later, I heard the police van took those young men somewhere up the Soesdyke-Linden Highway and ejected them.

Your brother Vivek was my PYO comrade before he left the party with Halim Majeed, Chandisingh, Teekah etc and became Burnham's political assistant and later magistrate. I last met him in 1995.

 

 

His son was quite a runner as well...runs in the family.

@Stormborn, old Charlie Cassatto and I had some interesting chats at GIMPEX where he worked. Charlie was locked up in Sybley Hall 1964-1966. He told me of many intrigues in the PPP. One of the best stalwarts I had the privilege to meet.

Rodney was great.  Indians loved him.  At a time when we needed Blacks to speak out against the PNC dictatorship to help the struggle for democracy, Rodney stepped in and was calling Burnham King Kong etc. and explaining to Blacks that Burnham and the PNC was punishing everyone.

 

Read the "Three Trials of Arnold Rampersaud."

Yes that the exact incident that I am talking about in Kitty.  The taking people to Soesdyke-Linden Highway was at High Courts protest though... not Kitty.  I was at the High Courts in the picket line and saw the goons coming so I took of my "peaceful picketer" tag and threw it away so they didn't know I was involved in the picket.  I think it was Bonita Harris that got a sound licking that day...could have been Karen Desouza.  That was the day Hamilton Green thugs pointed their guns at us on High street  when we were celebrating Walter's release from prison.  By the way, my brother was Vic Puran.  He left with Kawall Totaram and my brother-in-law Ramesh Deonarine.  Totaram never joined the PNC.

Yuh Rass was hiding under yuh bed when Uncle Nehru was chanting dat from Buxton to GT. Dat DAAG Bunham sent out notice that any Civil Servant that March with Rodney will be fired.  I called in sick and marched and chanted those same words from Buxton to GT while you were under your bloody bed!!!!

That was a massive crowd that day.  I was at the head of the UG contingent even though I was not a UG student at the time.  Eusi marched with us for most of the way.

Thanks for the correction. Vic Pooran is the name. Also, I met your dad around 1976 when he was headmaster at Ocean View/Uitvlugt Primary School.

 

DID YOU SEE THE CIA cAMERAS AND bURNHAM KILLERS IN THE CROWD???

I used to call that school the "Cow Pen" 

African and Indians could work together for a common good - I thought that was accomplished in 1953.

 

I disagree. I am not Marxist at all...although I am aware of Marxist academic methodologies. If you read the man's work - especially History of Guyanese Working People - you will get a feel for his sincerity through scholarship. The man's politics were rooted in profound scholarship, even if you disagreed with his Marxist methodology. If you read his work you will find nowhere inside the notion of zero-sum distribution. This cannot be said for the African/Indian intellectuals associated with contemporary political parties. These people of today cannot figure out that the destiny of bauxite is intertwined with that of sugar, and so on. If one industry fails all will be worse off. They cannot figure out that we have to grow the sada roti to make everyone better off.

 

You might be able to critique Rodney on the policy proposals his Marxism would bring and the possible errors emanating, but it is not right to question his intentions as a genuine leader for unity and economic justice. An old dougla man (77 years old) told me yesterday that one of the first things Burnham did was to remove a fuel subsidy for rice farmers. He argues it was to spite Indian rice producers. I doubt Rodney would have ever gone for this kind of zero sum political economy.

Yes, and that was party of the history Walter taught us....that the races worked together before until the division.

VVP said:

"By the way, my brother was Vic Puran.  He left with Kawall Totaram and my brother-in-law Ramesh Deonarine.  Totaram never joined the PNC."

 

I know Vic at UG. Before he became a PNC soupie, he was UGPYO.  When we were served letters compelling us to do National Service, Vic came to me and said don't go.

 

Then Vic became a soupie.  I had gone to him for help at OP where he was special assistant to Burnham, but Soupie Vic could not help me.

 

Your info. is incorrect.  My relative Totaram was a PNC.  However, he went back to PPP.  His photo is up at Freedom House with some other higher ups in the group picture.

I was in England for most of the Rodney hey days - 1977 - 1980, and I'm not that intimate with his struggles. All I know was that when Mugabe was greeting foreign dignitaries following Zimbabwe's independence after a violent struggle, Burnham was chagrined that Walter Rodney was the "Leader" in Mugabe's office while he was kept waiting outside Mugabe's office. Further, Burnham wondered how Rodney was able to make the trip via a clandestine exit to Suriname.

Yes, they filmed the funeral.  Mostly from WPA headquarters to the burial ground.  I wonder where that footage is.  Funny that all the big wigs in the PNC knew that I was a WPA supporter.  Burnham had his spies all over.