What's the worth of an X? A woman's vote? A man's life? Our better world? Illustration Copyright © 2022 by Linda M. Deane.
I HAVE BEEN mulling over this blog since the morning of January 19. I am still mulling over it, and most likely still will be even as you read it.
I physically started writing as tanks and troops amassed along Russia’s border with Ukraine.
By my second draft, Russia had invaded. Vladimir vs Volodymyr; clown vs comedian; one set of people vs another, very similar-looking set of people. With a weary, wary world looking on.
By my third draft I was watching footage of refugees—some getting through better than others—and video of a breastfeeding Ukrainian telling CNN journalist Anderson Cooper that her people just want to live on their own land, make their own mistakes, to have their own corrupt government—but a government that they elect.
By the time I began making revisions, my memories of January 19, 2022—the date Barbados got its chance to decide its leaders—were morphing.
…
The Weight
Election day: I wake in the morning, wondering if this election day will be the day?
Will it be the first time, in the forty years and two countries in which I’ve been eligible to vote, that I would place my precious, priceless X next to the name of an actual candidate? A real, living, breathing, human candidate? Not Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck—not even Daffy, who usually encapsulates my mood any given election cycle.
Will I linger too long in the booth, frustrated and in genuine upset at the lack of choices? Again. Perhaps arousing the suspicion of the election officials? Will I spoil my ballot in a futile attempt to register a protest vote? Again? Will I attempt to protest by voting for some little-known candidate from a minor, pop-up party?
Will I finally get to honour civil rights activists across continents whose struggle won me the right to vote in the first place? Or will I simply stan’ home and abstain—again? A legitimate course of action, although it can feel like a cop-out.
I try to picture myself placing my X against the name of a valid candidate and walking out of a polling station feeling good about it. Spring in my step, swing to my arms. Picture me going about my business, hopeful, if not confident, that I have not cast my ballot before swine.
I picture my old self in previous election cycles. The struggle, the silent, (seemingly) solitary, hopefully secret protest just felt too arduous to take on again, this time around. There was much else in the last four years that demanded attention and energy: we were—are—still in the midst of a pandemic. Health, safety, wellness and well-being of self and family were ever more paramount. Many of us were nudging the boundaries of our skill sets to earn a lockdown living—side gigs to supplement the side gigs—or else trying our damnedest to pursue our calling, fulfill our purpose, honour our passions. Just as the candidates littering up our streets and lampposts with their posters and begging for our Xs proclaimed to be doing.
As I prepare to go vote, selecting neutral colours right down to the choice of disposable mask, I ruminate on voters in other lands; how I have envied their options. Italy. That country’s Five Star Movement (M5S) founded by comedian—comedian!—Beppe Grillo in 2009 as a protest party before becoming a serious political player (albeit on the right of the spectrum). Or Spain. Its far-left-leaning Podemos growing out of an anti-austerity movement in 2014 to win eight percent of the vote and five seats in that year’s European Parliament election.
I ponder writers and politicians like Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, Chile’s Pablo Neruda, and the Czech Republic’s Václav Havel who became leaders, and the anti-establishment, humanist flavour of their politics.
And, of course, foremost in the imagination—Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, defiant, wonderfully potty-mouthed, and warrior-like in defending his homeland. He rose to prominence and popularity first as an actor and comedian.
I consider the spread of Pirate Parties, environmental parties and anti-austerity movements across Europe. The trajectory of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Idly, I wonder what leadership role Greta Thunberg might occupy, say, in ten years’ time.
Why am I wistfully contemplating voters in faraway lands? Because they appear to have genuine alternatives—or a vent, at least, for protest?
As I stroll purposefully in the late-morning, January sunshine, up the gap to the church that serves as my polling station, I fantasize about that lightness of being. An absence of weight I’ve felt on previous polling days. I fantasize about alternatives.
I imagine planting my X next to a valid candidate’s name, confident in the understanding that my X will still be my X. It will not belong to that candidate. It will simply be on loan. The candidate, if successful, will a borrower be; enjoying the use and benefit of it, on credit, as it were. And, like a furniture store or utility company that comes a-knocking for overdue payment and takes back the goods or services at any time, I can tek back my X, too. If not immediately, then next time.
As the polling day worker sanitizes my hands and ushers me to the appropriate queue, I imagine that whoever earns my X will have to know they can’t take it for granted.
And, yes, a few days after the election results come in—with that repeat thirty-love fantasy football scoreline—I am gratified to note that returning Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, in her post-election messaging, acknowledges our Xs are effectively on trust. She and her crew will not be taking them for granted, she says.
Good, I think. And, Wuk now start. Or continues. Address our health and safety. Begin with the environment, from which all our health, safety, growth, and prosperity flows. Secure the well-being of future Barbadian electorates.
We are not at war the way Ukraine or Russia is. Our borders are not being threatened in quite the same way. But our health, safety and well-being are—and we Barbadians are our own aggressors. There are many ways to be displaced, to be a refugee.
The Measure
Begin with the cars, I chant.
Bajans too love them cars. Are hypnotized, through powerful notions of class, status and social upward mobility, into loving and aspiring to own and drive them. And there’s reason for the hypnotism: every vehicle on the potholed road represents tax dollars in the national coffers. More cars, more dollars.
According to data from the Inter-American Development Bank, Barbados currently has more electric vehicles per capita than any other Caribbean nation. This is a promising move away from dependence on fossil-fuel-powered vehicles; away from gasoline and diesel imports—produced by the same Russia that continues to unfair Ukraine—and towards Barbados’ “cleaner, greener” 2030 deadline.
But electric vehicles present their own environmental issues, too, yes? This article in the UK Guardian outlines some of the challenges to be faced as we hurtle into the near future. And, on this long-overcrowded little rock of ours, tummuch cars is tummuch cars, no matter how they are fuelled.
Fallout from this Bajan love affair with automobiles includes noise pollution, air pollution and diminishing boundaries; our potholed roads becoming little more than racetrack and car park.
And then there is what I call sanctioned backyard lawlessness.
Increasingly, a householder’s—a registered voter’s—right to peace and quiet feels under threat. Space in which to rest, relax, sleep, concentrate, read, write, work, study, hold a conversation, teach or learn online, talk on the phone, conduct a Zoom meeting, enjoy a Netflix drama without having to rewind every fucking minute, or just to listen to said peace and quiet, is shrinking.
Sometimes the breach comes from neighbours; sometimes from several streets or a good mile away, but so loud you would swear it is the neighbours. Or you, yourself, in your own backyard. Except it’s not.
Whenever such disturbance has occurred in the past, a complaint may be lodged with the offender, or to the relevant environmental authority or the police. Sometimes with satisfaction, sometimes not.
There was such a need to call the authorities very recently—around the time I was on the umpteenth draft of this blog. It was a Saturday evening. I was attempting to relax with an old black-and-white crime flick on YouTube, and there it was—a whole set of backyard lawlessness. For the best part of an hour, I had to contend with the sound of tyres screeling, engines revving and roaring, cars dragging and backfiring—and it wasn’t coming from the movie. It was outside, a good mile away. But it might as well have been coming from inside my own bedroom. I could only imagine how the people living closer to it were managing.
The police officer I spoke to said there wasn’t much he could do. Said he would put in a call to a station that was closer by. He sounded weary. Fed up. I felt like Ukraine. Except Ukraine seems to have more defence systems and the will of her people at her disposal.
…
Election day: inside the polling booth, my pencil hovers over the options. Outside is bright and sunny. I am fantasizing about a lightness of being, about measuring the skip in my step, the swing of my arms.
But all I can feel is the weight of my X. Daffy on my shoulder.
