We begin 2025 with the shocking reports of a teen being murdered by his ‘best friend’. The reality that gangs are everywhere causes us to pause.
We are struggling to get food on our tables. Life is closing in on us. We are living in grim times.

We can no longer dance our worries away. Our very survival depends on us fighting these problems. The time is now. The moment is urgent. We can no longer postpone attending to the societal issues that confront us.
This context causes us to wonder at the wisdom of our Opposition Leader in her embrace of the incoming US President. A man with a reputation for lying in his first term: the Washington Post claims that he lied 30,573 times in that period.
She runs down the cul-de-sac of the culture wars—the gender definition and the treatment of trans people—rather than see the class war that is being waged.
Why does Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissesar think that the billionaires are perched on the front seats of the dais at the Inauguration? Why have they paid at least US$1 million for that privilege?

It is an investment. They expect to be paid back through the removal of regulations and other such actions. The media giants will permit disinformation to run unchecked. This wanton abuse threatens our democracy.
Why did the oil and gas companies pay Trump the wads of money they did? “Drill, baby, drill!” is the answer. What will that free-for-all mean for us? Less demand for our main export, more market manipulation and higher climate change risks.
How can Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissesar not see that? The open corruption of the billionaires’ version of ‘pay-per-view’ is simply stunning. If our politicians act based on who pays them, what will be the outcome for low-income people among us?
What signals does Mrs Persad-Bissesar send by endorsing President Trump’s actions on Day 1? He overturned the rule of law by freeing the January 6 rioters.

On Day 2, he pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running an underground online marketplace where drug dealers and others conducted more than $200 million in illicit trade using Bitcoin.
In both cases, he acted out of a personal agenda and put at risk the nation’s security. As foreshadowed by Cambridge Analytica in Trinidad, he appears ready to allow TikTok room to continue collecting information on US citizens.
Does Mrs Persad-Bissesar desire to repeat Trump’s reckless acts and compromise the rule of law? Is her personal or party’s agenda more important than the country?

Photo: Office of the Parliament 2024
Bishop Victor Gill went down the same road as Mrs Persad Bissesar with his comments on the cultural changes. Has he not read the Bible? Matthew 25:24 tells him: “You [spiritually] blind guides, who strain out a gnat (consuming yourselves with microscopic matters) and swallow a camel (ignoring and violating God’s precepts)!”
Amos, the Old Testament prophet, cried out: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24). Amos did not spare the wives who lived fancy lives off the exploitative acts of their husbands. In Amos 4:1, they are called “cows of Bashan”.
What does Brother Gill believe Jesus meant when He said: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor”? Is Gill or Persad-Bissesar concerned about the people experiencing poverty? Or is it about corralling others to see through their lens?
Thank God for Pastor Clive Dottin! He courageously keeps confronting us and our leaders with our penchant for lawlessness.
In his latest cry, he said: “We cannot have parliamentarians fraternising with gang leaders and crooks and demons. That has to stop. I call upon the political leaders of the two major political parties in the country, you cannot have people in your ranks who engage in activity that affirms gangs and drug dealing. That is wrong.”
Why are so many of our religious leaders content to collect tithes and ignore the slums all around them? Are they all like the Levites in the story of the Good Samaritan? Luke 10:25-37. They are too busy with their rituals and cannot see the needs of the people around them.
Is Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde the only one brave enough to call out the violence done to the Unfortunates? Was she not acting in the office of the Old Testament prophets?
Or did we expect her to pay obeisance to the all-conquering President Trump like the craven Republicans and rich but insecure billionaires did?
Trump went to church, not a ballroom. The Epistle of James is clear about how to treat him and those like him.
“My Christian brothers, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of shining greatness. Since your trust is in Him, do not look at one person as more important than another. What if a man comes into your church wearing a gold ring and good clothes? And at the same time a poor man comes wearing old clothes.

“What if you show respect to the man in good clothes and say, ‘Come and sit in this good place’? But if you say to the poor man, ‘Stand up over there’, or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet’—are you not thinking that one is more important than the other? This kind of thinking is sinful.” James 2:1 – 4.
The moment is here! We can no longer sit in our corporate boxes and look down on the impoverished. There is no common space shared, neither at cricket or in Carnival. We cannot rob them of respect and dignity and expect them to laugh it off.
To compound matters, we have erased any hope of community by the treatment we meted out to our children during the Covid pandemic. The great divide was made worse.
Children were left behind because they had no resources to go online. Our hospitals can be run down since the wealthy do not have to go there.
How could there be any national pride? How can we sing: “Side by side we stand, Islands of the blue Caribbean Sea, This our Native Land, We pledge our lives to Thee. Here every creed and race find an equal place”?
Does every creed and race find an equal place? Until we can fulfil this aspiration, we are destined for social unrest in whatever iteration is convenient.
We must act urgently.

Noble Philip, a retired business executive, is trying to interpret Jesus’ relationships with the poor and rich among us. A Seeker, not a Saint.