5.27.2010

Coke and his Shower Posse

Experts: Accused Jamaican drug lord akin to Robin Hood.
Jamaicans, don't know, if he's extradited, who will be there for them. There are mothers wondering, 'Who's going to buy my child lunch?' or 'If I get sick, who's going to pay my hospital bills?'. Coke and his gang hand out sandwiches in the streets, send children to school, build medical and community centers. Coke and his Shower Posse have thousands of everyday people willing to support him because in these guys are the heroes of Kingston's slum version of Sherwood Forest.

The US demand for illegal recreational drugs has created a giant sucking sound, it's the sound of huge chunks of money changing hands at very high speed. Jamaicans, many of whom live in abject poverty in Kingston, have few options in their universal quest to provide a better future for their children, Christopher "Dudus" Coke gives them an avenue to hope.

On both sides, Jamaican or US, all sides everywhere, the insanity of the inequity in wealth distribution provides the energy to turn the turbines of the War on Drugs and the gangs. Our culture's denial of the health model of drug use and abuse has, like the prohibition of booze, created the perfect profit picture for organized crime to take over.

Humans have used drugs since before the begining of written history, before the first farm, before the first best friend slept by our fire. All the laws enacted by successive modern governments to appease the more anal religious factions deny the basic human desire to get high.

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by
the Prohibition law, for nothing is more destructive of respect for the
government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced."
-Albert Einstein 1921