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elected prime minister, Snyder Rini. These protests also had as their backdrop intensive violence—arson, vandalism, and looting (“Solomons See End,” 2006, p. 9).
Popular protest is an inescapable aspect of contemporary civilian politics and a tool in the armory of civil societies in both democratic and undemocratic polities. Jamaica is no exception. The modules of protest that are selected do not always match the goals the protestors wish to accomplish or meet with the desire for creating a genuine civil society. For example, when I was an undergraduate student at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) between 1994 and 1998, I participated in my fair share of student mobilizations and protest demonstrations. I was one of several West Indian students who (with support from a network of popular Jamaican reggae artistes) led a massive student march through the streets of Kingston to protest the passage of a shipment of plutonium through Caribbean waters in 1994. “No plutonium, blow your horns” was our rallying cry as we implored motorists and other Jamaicans to join our collective resistance and to pressure Caribbean governments to act in line with our wishes. I actively supported a succession of student blockades of the UWI, Mona campus to protest against increases in tuition fees in 1995. I also participated in student marches around the Mona campus on a number of other occasions, such as when police shot and killed a food and drink vendor, when students demanded improved campus security, and when students tried to force the university administration to open a newly built wing of the library for students’ use.
These student mobilizations pale into near insignificance when they are compared to the radical student and black power movements on the Mona campus of the UWI in the 1960s and the political protests that engulfed Jamaican society in the 1970s. Nonetheless, I felt that I was among a large network of civically engaged students who were politically aware, concerned, involved, driven, and empowered to defend and pursue causes that we felt were just. We subscribed intensely to “action, not a bag o’ mouth”—a maxim borrowed from a popular song of the day. Petitions, letters, and dialogue, although they were used, seemed to be feeble tools to employ against a robust university administration.