I have had several experiences of racism. I have been attacked more than 7 times by someone I have never seen, just because I am Black and I work to protect the community. Since I moved to Bangor, I have never left the community behind. I go to university, and I have a security badge. Over the years, during weekends when people are out partying, I put my uniform on and protect the most vulnerable people in our community. During the process of doing what I love the most for my community, I have been attacked several times. The last time I was attacked, I was down for 6 months without doing anything in my life. Nonetheless, I thank God I am alive, and I am still helping the community, which also allows me to live within them. I picked up a very important job, which is to help the most vulnerable people in our community, and I would not allow myself to be stopped.
Black Lives Matter means a lot to me. The day Sundiata Keita formed the Mali empire with the Mandinkos, she said, ‘there should be no human being to be enslaved by another human being.’ This day, I knew the struggle has just started. My ancestors are part of that struggle; my great-grandfathers liberated a town full of slaves from slave traders and their masters in a place called Kauru in Gambia. We still have those liberated slave people.
The life of everybody matters, especially the life of the most assaulted race in the history of mankind, which is the Black race. We have been assaulted since the time of the Pharaohs. We have never been left alone; had it been we were left alone; we would not be here today. The struggle still continues, the world is listening, and we can now see the world has realized that without the Black race and the Black people, the world will not move an inch.
We built the world’s 350 years of free slave labour to build this capitalist system, which they call the first wall. The first wall’s pride was built on the sweat and the blood of my ancestors, with no pain which was by our caste group. Regardless of our natural environment, which is creating global warming and climate change, we still have our people living in the desert. We cannot afford to live there anymore; nobody is here to listen to our people’s story. This is our story; this is where the struggle still continues, far back to 5,600 years of the Mali empire. We now see people educating themselves, and we are faced with a reality.
The reality is our existence as a human race that has come to light. It means that regardless of race and colour, we need to come together and protect the resources we are endowed with so we all can have a better-quality life.
The death of George Floyd is just an immediate factor. There are so many deaths which includes Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jeff Kennedy. It is a tsunami of awareness for the world to realise how some people think that the biggest race in the world have to live as a subhuman being. So, his death was for our cause. He is the sacrifice lamb, many great men also died before, something has to be done, which is why we are all doing our little bits. Like my uncle said, if every little hand in this society is occupied with doing something, the society will be a proud place to live in. I recognise that and I can see that happening.
I have always been a protester and an activist. I stood against a military regime in Gambia in 1994 to challenge them that there is another way of getting into power rather than the callous way of using the arms given to them to protect the citizens, to suppress them instead. For the record, I was only 15 years old at that time. I also worked together with the military to draw a timetable to democracy which lasted only two years on record on Gambian News. I have been leading a protest in my community fighting against hunger where we built a big farm and fenced it and also provided water to the community. It is a protest to feed our own people.
Also, my friends and I took over the Gambian Embassy in 2012 when the dictatorship was high in Gambia, we took up the Gambian diplomatic post for almost a day to register our anger to the international world stakeholders to make it known that business is not as usual as it used to be. Thank God victory came our way in 2016. Protest is part of my life; I protest for a good cause and I keep going when I can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
I was sent on exile for 15 years because of my stunt, I was working in the bank, Standard Chartered bank, with a very good salary. I cannot accept to live a standard life whereby other people are not even considered as human beings, so I am going to continue the protest.
My advice here is to protest. It does not mean that you are angry but means that you want to put the attention of the stakeholders to recognise something that is fundamentally going wrong among the human society. Protest is part of everybody’s civil, social, political right. In order to protect and preserve oneself, the expression of feelings to stakeholders is crucial. I am advising every youth to come out with a plan of concern that is affecting them and their livelihood which will make them a better person. They should come together to find a way of protesting. Nowadays there are so many ways you can protest. It could be through online protest, petitions, demonstration, symposiums, and many more which are less expensive. We are the people who have so many issues at stake which we are not talking about. It is the right time for us to recognise it, talk about it, and play our role in the community to fight against stereotyping and inequality.
No justice, no peace.
