GUYANA: Georgetown businesses count millions in losses after severe flooding

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An employee cleans up water from a store (News Room)

Businesses in Georgetown are counting millions of dollars losses, as well as an interruption to business, due to severe flooding from intense rainfall on Wednesday.

Up until Thursday, businesses were still trying to get rid of accumulated water and see what goods and materials can be salvaged.  Residents of Georgetown also suffered major losses and damages to their homes.

GUYANA: Harmon promises `serious resistance’ if Local Gov’t Elections not held next year

Joseph Harmon

By Stabroek News-  October 28, 2020

Leader of the Opposition Joseph Harmon today said that there will be “serious resistance” by the APNU+AFC coalition if Local Government Elections (LGE) are not held next year as mandated by law.

“…..Local Government Elections must be held so that communities can choose their leaders. Since the APNU+AFC came into office in 2015, we had two Local Government Elections in 2016 and 2018. The next LGE is due in 2021,” Harmon said.         

Guyana: Georgetown: Stabroek Redevelopment Project Proposal – Video

City Council unveils five-year Stabroek redevelopment proposal

THE STABROEK MARKET REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT – was launched today, 18 August 2020. The Mayor and Councillors of Georgetown gave the green light for the project.

The execution of this project will result in the beautification of the Stabroek Market area and will boost local tourism in the surrounding environs, being that the market is a National Landmark and an integral part of Guyana’s history.         

Emancipation Day 2020 – Message from President David Granger

President Granger and First Lady, Sandra Granger

 Aug 01, 2020  Kaieteur News

Africans endured enslavement in the Guiana colonies for 200 years before achieving their Emancipation 182 years ago on 1st August 1838. They laid the foundation for the freedoms enjoyed by every Guyanese today.

Emancipation was not a generous gift of the European slave trading empires. Africans resisted enslavement and fought for freedom in the great revolts in Berbice in 1763, in Demerara, in 1823 and in Essequibo, in 1834 and at other times in other places.     

CANADA: Ten positive things that have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic – blogTO

CANADA: Positive Outcomes due to the COVID-19 pandemic

It’s difficult to see a potential silver lining from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic that’s been wreaking havoc around the world, and here in Canada. But amid the chaos and disaster, there have already been a few positives.

Here are some good things that have come out of COVID-19 in Canada that will hopefully stick once the pandemic is over.

1. Acts of kindness are trending             

Beautiful Guyana – By Geoff Burrowes + 3 Videos

By Geoff Burrowes

Recently, my old friend Jai Naipaul made a very profound remark. He does from time to time – though not as often as he thinks!

        We became friends on the hatch of the MV Mabiri while we were waiting for the Demerara tide to turn so we could dock. We were 15 years old at the time and were returning from the Jubilee Jamboree in England, and Georgetown was so near and yet so far, until the tide came in! Jai and a scout called Edwin Moses and I had a good gaff and we found kindred spirits in one another! Hence our friendship, thousands of miles north in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 63 years later!        

Montreal: Racial situations at play similar to those in the U.S.A. – By Yvonne Sam

Black Montreal has been fighting a pandemic that predates Covid 19—It is Racism by the SPVM.

By Yvonne Sam – A Montreal resident

According to Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who studies African American mental health says, “Racism is traumatic for people of color.”  “Everything that you have to carry around anyway as a black person, to add onto it having to watch people in your community who’ve done nothing killed at the hands of people in power who will probably suffer few, if any, consequences”. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/magazine/racisms-psychological-toll.html.

Our screens and feeds are filled with feeds and images of Black Americans dying or being brutalized. Scores of killings answered with acquittals. Now, as a pandemic rages, Blacks in communities across the country disproportionally devastated by COVID-19 are now forced to bear witness to more deaths at the hand of racist policemen.       

Buxton/Friendship Museum Archives & Culture Center – Thank You and Greetings for 2020

Friends of Villages Museum & Archives Inc.

(Supporting the Buxton/Friendship Museum Archives & Culture Center)

P.O. Box 352, Lanham, Maryland USA 20768-0352

Email – friendsofvmainc.gmail.com

A 501(c) (3) Organization – Tax ID# 82-1835070

 The Museum is located at 35 Edmund Ford Street-Middle Street (Lower Level) in Buxton Village, East Coast Guyana.

Dear Supporters & Friends,

On behalf of the Board of Directors we wish you Happy New Year.

Also, Happy Kwanza on this last day of its celebration. IMANI- Faith, as we reflect and honor our African Ancestors.           

Canada: The bold new plan for an Indigenous-led development in Vancouver

A rendering of how the new First Nations district Senakw could look from the Burrard Street Bridge. Photograph: Revery Architecture

Matthew Halliday – Fri 3 Jan 2020  – The Guardian UK

The Senakw development aims to ease the city’s chronic housing crisis – and to challenge the mindset that indigeneity and urbanity are incompatible.

The scrubby, vacant patch beneath the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver looks at first glance like a typical example of the type of derelict nook common to all cities: 11.7 acres of former railway lands, over which tens of thousands of people drive every day.

This is not any old swath of underused space, however. It’s one of Canada’s smallest First Nations reserves, where dozens of Squamish families once lived. The village was destroyed by provincial authorities more than a century ago.

Read more

Guyana-born Dimple Willabus launches campaign for NYC Council District 46

December 18, 2019 / News /  Enlarge this image

Dimple Willabus, center, is pictured with her family, from left, daughter, Anaya, youngest known author in New York, husband, NYPD Lieutenant Winston Willabus, daughter, Chantelle, and son, Brandon. Photo by Tangerine Clarke

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BY TANGERINE CLARKE

In a passionate call to action, R. Dimple Willabus, Democratic candidate for the City New York Council District 46, called on women to step forward from the backseat, become leaders and join the movement to make the change that “our community really needs.”