Champions of Change Blog

Inventing a Sustainable Future for Latin America

The future has always been far away. Ever since I was a child, I remember thinking about the future as a very distant event. I remember thinking that the future would be different and, in one word, better than whatever the present was for me back then.

Today, I realize I live in the future, just not the future I wanted for my family, my children and the people I care about. I realize the future I live in is a future I contributed to create mostly by not doing much about it.

Granted, the world we live in has been marred by a series of unfortunate events, some caused by us, some not. In the last ten years alone we’ve had perhaps the worst financial crisis the world has seen in 80 years, as well as a series of crises relating to the lack of or uneven distribution of natural resources, including water, food and oil. And most recently, climate change. The problem is not necessarily the amount of damage caused by these crises, but rather the long term, and even irreversible, effects they could have.

The financial crisis of 2008 served as a wakeup call for the entire planet. The effects of the crisis were felt all over the world, especially in developing countries. It was a moment in which we had to decide whether to pursue the same goals that had brought us to this point, or to change the ways we think about the economy, the environment, technology and society. That is, we were at a cross roads where we needed to decide what kind of future we wanted for ourselves, our children and the entire world.

Cultivating the Caribbean American Community

It has been seven years since the official recognition by the US Congress and the White House of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month (NCAHM), chalking up another milestone in Caribbean American History. Caribbean people have been coming here for a long time. Caribbean immigrants have been a part of America’s intelligentsia and intellectual tradition -- John Russworm, a Jamaican, started the first black newspaper, and the Harlem Renaissance can count among its leaders many of Caribbean ancestry, such as J.A. Rogers, Claude McKay, and Marcus Garvey. The history and the destinies of the Caribbean and the USA are inextricably linked.

When I started the Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS), almost twenty years ago, I envisioned ICS as a space for the Caribbean diaspora to engage in the practice of citizen advocacy that is the culture of the American democratic tradition; to advance our interests, for I believed then and now that a better world is possible. I thought it vital that Caribbean Americans become stakeholders in the US/Caribbean dialogue, and in the Caribbean development discourse. Back then, it was not the norm for a young immigrant woman with no money to stake out a claim in the Washington, D.C. intelligentsia. ICS started by operating with solely the talent, time and treasure of an all-volunteer cast, and a skeleton budget, and I must admit that at times I have questioned my own sanity. But always, there is still small voice saying, “If not now, when? If not you, who?” And so, along with the few committed, I persist.