I don’t pretend to be a public health expert, but I do have a working knowledge of its principles. Most importantly, I’m writing because the public health of my Virgin Islands community is of the utmost concern to me.
In particular, I have been and continue to be very distressed about the level and pervasiveness of violence in our small community and its impact on individual lives that may be lost or harmed. And violence is a public health issue!
I am equally concerned about its impact on our physical as well as mental health, its impact on our quality of life as a community, and what the violence that is all around us may present about our future. Violence, when and how it occurs, is not an isolated incident. It sends ripples outward and touches all of us, whether perceived or not.
The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines violence thus:
While most of us readily recognize physical violence perpetrated against another, please note that it includes self-inflicted violence on every level, up to and including suicide. But it’s not only in physical ways that violence is perpetrated. It also importantly includes violence in our words, actions, and attitudes, and I believe that in utilizing accurate public health methodology, primary prevention needs to begin right there! The old childhood adage is wrong! Words do hurt!
Of course, secondary interventions that occur at or after a violent incident and tertiary actions that generally occur after and might include prevention of retaliation must also be employed. But primary prevention actions are broader and attempt to address violence at the source! I believe that begins with the community, with its adults, and with us!
Our children most effectively learn from us by example. Therefore, while we must help our children develop healthy interpersonal skills and nonviolent conflict resolution strategies, adult behavior has a critical role to play. What our young people see too often from us are our own violent reactions to disagreements and our attraction to and sharing of violent events as entertainment. To reduce violence, we have to accept our share of responsibility for the gun violence that is robbing us of our young ( and some not-so-young) Virgin Islanders – robbing us of our treasure, our brain trust, and the future that our ancestors fought and died for us to have.
So, while fighting violence requires multifaceted, multilevel, multi-sector approaches, I believe that our community must come to understand and accept that its underpinnings begin with us. Therefore, if it is to change, we must change!
We need to understand that unless we improve how we deal with each other we stop the insults we hurl at each other, the verbal attacks and harmful insinuations against those in authority, the negative views we spew on the airwaves, and the mistrust we create without evidence—unless we change these things, other attempts to bring peace and bring back the beloved and sharing community will be futile or less than effective.
What all of the above does when our children hear or witness it day in and day out is create a sense of hopelessness and despair in our young people and disrespect and devaluation of the lives of others! It tends to develop a level of anxiety and depression in all of us.
A usually terse Supreme Court Justice, Harold Willocks, took the time to extend his remarks to address this at his inauguration. The fact that he spoke to it for so long should send us a powerful message. In his over 30 years in law as prosecutor, defender, and judge, he has been able to witness it firsthand, and he is visibly and understandably troubled by it and by the dark clouds of “psychological harm, maldevelopment, and deprivation” he sees us creating and burdening our community with. The atmosphere we create makes it hard for us to thrive, as we are now well positioned to do and as we need to do. This also affects our physical and mental health as individuals, and it certainly creates the climate for the increased suicides we are seeing.
So I beg you: We don’t have to love each other, but we have to respect each other as fellow human beings, Virgin Islanders, and the offices you elect us to, or we are appointed to hold. We also need to respect ( and yes, even love) ourselves so that we comport ourselves in ways worthy of the work and sacrifices of our ancestors here, across the Caribbean, and in the United States.
Can we smile instead of “cut eye,” and if it’s too much to say hi, hello, or good morning, good afternoon, or goodnight to those we disagree with, then just nod in acknowledgment that at least they exist? Can we also stop saying that nothing is happening here—but acknowledge that true and sustainable progress takes time and that change would happen faster if we stopped complaining but sat down among our groups, with our leaders, and with the wider community in constructive and respectful ways?
I know we don’t have good examples to draw on nationally, but can we individually and collectively take the position that the most important goal is the “greater good”; that it can’t be only what I want for me, but that it is addressing the needs of the “greater Virgin Islands”. Addressing the needs of the whole will benefit all of us as individuals.
So, all of the foregoing is to say that to end the violence that is destroying our families and harming our community, each and every one of us must commit to change and accept that to move our Virgin Islands forward in a stable, thriving, sustainable manner, it has to be ALL VIRGIN ISLANDS HANDS ON DECK!
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