An Open Letter to Adrian Francis

Dear Mr. Francis,

You don’t know me. I’ve made it my life’s goal to do good work while simultaneously minding my own business. I have a small social circle and an even smaller amount of influence. 

I don’t know you. My common ancestral last name and social class have given me this privilege. I’ve been able to be blissfully unaware of your growing fascist movement. A movement that, ironically enough, in its original state, wouldn’t have you regardless of your coon like behaviour. 

So here we are, two strangers staring blindly across a battlefield as muddy as the moors of Culloden. In the chaos of it all we may make eye contact but it’ll be too quick for us to register amongst the brutality of all that surrounds us. 

Over the weekend, you and your group of Hutu imitators made it your business to stand outside of the gym sheltering Dorian refugees and protest. “The Bahamas is for Bahamians”, you screamed.  You screamed this with such surety and if I were a purist I would take this time to tell you that your last name makes me ponder. It’s an English last name but it can very well be French. Your skin colour lets me know that your parents were not mulatto, therefore their parents could not have possibly been in the ranks of upper French society. Which leads me to believe that your ancestral land, taking into account your residence in The Bahamas, would be by closest proximity Hispaniola, Haiti.

I made that up. Like I said, I don’t know you, but in this new sovereign world you seek to create, if you were its Robespierre I would surely have the ability to wield my pen with the reckless might of Marat. 

The media has taken to calling your group a “fringe group”. Those of us that are well versed in history know that fringe groups turn into mainstream ideals and those mainstream ideals turn into radical political movements. Those movements give people confidence to act in inhumane ways and this all starts when we give hatred a voice. This all starts when we just call you “fringe”. You’re not hateful though, You’re a man of God. My facebook research says that you’re a pastor. I’m unsure of which gospel however. 

Let’s be very clear Mr. Francis, As a young Bahamian woman who can trace her lineage as far back as the plantations of Exuma. Who’s familial story was lost on the shores of the African West Coast and whose ancestors had to subsequently dig their heels into the soil of this land that was never our own or yours to begin with, You do not speak for me. 

You and your group’s lack of ambition and success have nothing to do with Haitian migrants and everything to do with the only consistent thing about various government administrations, Failure. Failure to innovate. Failure  to plan. Failure to lead. As a matter of fact you do them a great favour when you give them a reason other than their ineptitude. You give them something to hide behind when you point to a group of people and say they are the reason why the country cannot flourish. 

There is a great chance that you and your militant group with it’s poorly worded manifesto and ill placed national ideals will not read this. I understand that most groups operate within bubbles of their own making. I include myself and my liberal social circle in this bubble society. I do hope however, that someone reads my words to you. The metaphorical eye contact if you will. I want you to know that as long as there are people like me standing guard for human decency, the only place that leaves you in is the mud. The Moorish land in which you started such a fruitless campaign.

I hope standing outside of that gymnasium in the pouring rain sparked joy to your otherwise empty life, because in 50 years time, if history does see it fit to remember such a callous name as yours, the caption beneath your sweat riddled face will read nothing short of ignorant, nothing more than sad and nothing as powerful or sympathetic as Bonnie Prince Charles. There will be no monuments in your name. There will be no honour in your cause. Your memory will be a relic in a time our country should be ashamed of. 

The only memorabilia? Your poorly designed t-shirts. 

Regards,

Ashleigh Sean Rolle

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