A stint in the lock-ups, a charge of larceny and a case that dragged on for five years marked the beginning of a turning point in Karen de Souza’s life when she realized that living is much more than making oneself comfortable while others suffer around you.
Today de Souza is known as women rights activist, human rights activist, child rights activist and activist against any kind of wrong committed against humankind, but many years ago she was known as a politician. (We are all politicians simply by waking up in the morning, she remarked.)
“I think I am still known as a politician, probably among older people…” de Souza told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
In those days she was a member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), which she joined even before it became a political party since she was ‘recruited’ during her years at the University of Guyana when the eventual party leader the late Walter Rodney and Rupert Roopnaraine were organizing the group. But now she is better known for the work she has been doing with Red Thread, which for a number of years has been leading the fight for women and children’s rights, including their access to justice. Red Thread initially came out of the WPA and her sister activist Andaiye is at its forefront.
de Souza is known as a woman who is never shy about speaking out against any injustice, since for her if one cannot stand up for what one believes in and speak out against the ills of society then one in fact is being controlled. She may be considered by some as a woman who has allowed the ills of society to consume her, but for her it is criminal to just sit back and not be affected by all that is wrong especially when it involves innocent children.
The most recent of the recipients of the 2014 Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence is definitely not motivated by a search for fame in her work; she does it because there is a great need for it.
An example of how consumed she can become by society’s ills occurred several years ago when she sat outside Parliament Buildings on a one-woman hunger strike. At that time there were a number of child abuse cases but what pushed her to take such an extreme measures was a tiny paragraph about a toddler who had been killed and dumped in the garbage.
“I was really offended by this and all it got was a small paragraph somewhere in the middle of the newspaper and there was no response…” de Souza said, and even today as she recalls this she is still visibly affected.
“I just felt that something had to be done, I wasn’t even doing it to draw attention to it, I was just doing it because I had to stop it because the place had to be mad for this to be possible…” she said as she remembered how the area outside of Parliament was different then; it was not used as a toilet nor was it as filthy as it is now.
For her the biggest achievement of this was that she was able to move on and continue working, and she had many conversations with people who were suffering in one way or another and there were interventions.
“I did not sit outside of parliament to organise anybody; I sat there because I had to sit there… and from then to now there have been even more horror stories and we are still in the same state,” de Souza said adding that society has lost its sense of individual responsibility.
In fact, for her it is the politics in Guyana which has made the population operate as if they are in exile, and the attitude of people is that once they are not directly affected it is not their business.
“Politics has distanced us from our understanding of what it is to be human, of what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be responsible…” de Souza said.
She equated the behaviour of the parliamentarians and the powers that be in Office of the President as “school yard, yard fowl behaviour” which has nothing to do with politics per se.
“It is a plague on all their houses, they are all wrong, they are all out of order and they need to do a lot more listening and a lot less talking or rather shouting…” de Souza said in a direct message to the politicians.
For her party politics will never transform anything in the country unless the needs of communities are addressed. As a matter of fact the notion of party politics, de Souza said (not just in Guyana) is premised on leaders with no real reference back to the people that they are supposed to represent. The party memberships are not allowed and do not see themselves as being able to give instructions to leaders, and “that is kind of self-defeating if you want to transform relations in any kind of society.”
‘Purely accidental’
de Souza describes her stint in politics as “purely accidental” as she recalled her first job out of school (and her only paid job) was as a library assistant in Prime Minister Forbes Burnham’s office. In her young days she said she adhered to a very nationalist ideal and after about a year of working she opted to join the National Service, an experience she described as an eye opener as most of the young people involved were from grass roots families and many of them were illiterate or semi-literate. She organised reading classes while she was in the service.
She remembered the National Service staff as all being seconded from the military, and while she enjoyed various aspects of the military thrust what she found “offensive and ridiculous was the psychological games that they played,” which were not necessary and were an abuse of power.
Back then she bought the whole nationalist scenario and the various slogans, but the psychological games of the National Service began to plant questions in her mind. However, it was only after she started attending the University of Guyana that the change started. That was where she met Rodney and Roopnaraine and more questions were raised in her head. The issue that made her shift her support from the government of the day and caused what she described as the “breaking point” were the Public Service Union elections.
She chose to campaign for the opposition candidates and went as far as distributing flyers of support where she worked, and was promptly “called in.”
“[There] were some very intense efforts to intimidate me… and that essentially is what drove me to investigate what this WPA [was] and what these people were talking about,” she said.
And it was not long after that she was charged with larceny of a National Service kit. She was 21 years old at the time.
At that time the Ministry of National Development was burnt down and because Roopnaraine, Rodney and others were accused of the arson, she was also included and her house was searched. This could also have been driven by the fact that she and some other students had taken things for Roopnaraine and others who had been arrested on the suspicion that they had burnt down the ministry.
Following the discovery of the kit de Souza said she was arrested and held for three nights at the East La Penitence Police Station. Released for one night she was then rearrested in the wee hours and taken to court the next day and placed on bail. The trial dragged on for five years but was eventually dismissed. Once she was charged she was interdicted from duty at the library; that was the last time she had a ‘real’ job.
The big “push” for her from supporting the then administration and moving to the WPA was when she was interrogated about her support for the opposition candidates for the Public Service Union posts, as it was then she realized that “these people are not serious about any of the slogans.”
She is not bothered by the fact that she has not worked in the real world since, and as she puts it she is fortunate that she has siblings who are more conventional than she and her friends are, in addition to which fortuitously she has no children or dependents.
For de Souza the driving force even after she had seen “one horror story after the other” was the women she worked with who are a constant inspiration. Red Thread, she said, is energised by grass roots women who shape the politics of the organization, “with their willingness to organise change” despite all the pressures of their lives.
‘Women are divided’
For de Souza women like every element in society are divided; there are class divisions and race divisions.
She noted that most professional and middle class women don’t have a clue how the maids in their homes survive.
“And it is not that they can’t find out; it is almost as though having got to this position, ‘I cannot look back and if I can get to this position then the reason you are not in this position is because something is wrong with you, maybe you lazy.’ This is even though you are exploiting this woman for ten, twelve hours a day.”
She noted that once the discussion is centered around a certain kind of organisation and professional women it would largely be about having more women in executive positions, more women parliament.
“Our response is what have the women in parliament done for women in this country? This thing about the promotion of women because they are women is very limited because very often the women believe that they have to outdo the men in being obnoxious, and there is no reason to excuse that because it is a woman doing it.”
And while some may believe that there are too many women’s groups tripping over each other, de Souza said she believes there are not enough women’s groups in the country.
“I think there are not enough groups that are really organised around developmental issues. I think the unfortunate thing about many of the organisations is that they are very unifocal… and part of it is protecting themselves from political parties and protecting funding, but they don’t feel they can comment on an issue because that might offend…” de Souza said.
She said that is the way in which the groups are actually controlled and many times it is left up to Red Thread to comment on what some may consider to be sensitive issues.
And while this administration has been boasting about the country doing well economically, de Souza questioned when this will become of direct benefit to the poor as there is no trickle of the wealth reaching them.
“The insistence on the solution to our economic grief is foreign directed investment and a bigger private [sector] and entrepreneurship… these are words; they are not reflected in the lives and improved access of the poor households. Access to everything, education, health… it is not working but that is the global paradigm that we operate,” de Souza observed.
Red Thread
As to the origin of Red Thread (which has been in existence since 1986) de Souza recalled that the women who started the organisation were members of the WPA, and had demonstrated against food shortages which had led to the arrest of a number of them. The other women who had been central in the demonstration and had helped to form the organisation made it clear that they were not interested in party politics since what was needed was “food and money.”
It was Andaiye who had made the bold decision to organise the women in the WPA away from party politics and eventually make the group autonomous and separate from the party, although there was some resistance from party members and even from de Souza herself.
“There was a lot of resistance and resentment from some of the men in the party… but it worked because we essentially started something within communities with a fairly broad mandate.”
The focus was on organising across race and across party lines and it was made clear being a part of Red Thread was not limited to being a party member. And while for a while she shouldered the responsibility of being a part of the organisation and the WPA, de Souza eventually shifted fully to the women within the group.
“The party focus was very broad, very large and national, but never really had the time to drill down to specifics to really address what was happening with individuals and families… and given the anti-racist focus in our kind of divided society the approach [of Red Thread]did make a lot of sense to me.” Initially with the help of funding Red Thread organized income-generating projects and embroidery is the project that it is best known for. They bought the material and paid the women to produce high quality work, on the assumption that they would find a market for the pieces and replenish the money, but unfortunately, de Souza admitted, “our marketing was lousy.”
“But it is also true… what we set out to do was also to examine and explain how to value labour and how to cost a product…” de Souza said, noting that the pieces produced were very high end and so had a very limited market.
And the women who could not embroider (you had to do it to a very high standard to be considered) identified their own ideas on what could be done based on their needs, which included textbooks and exercise books which were very expensive. A project was put together and with funding the group produced sections of primary school books along with exercise books and these were marketed in schools.
Initially Red Thread worked in four communities – Meten-Meer-Zorg, Linden, Cotton Tree and Victoria – and annual forums with women were organised to understand what they needed.
Eventually the income generation initiative was shifted to more community training and an education drive, and for a period a Jamaican group worked along with Red Thread to develop the participatory method. The discussions were taken to different communities around the country and various issues were discussed, and importantly the issue of violence was introduced.
Today, the organisation has full-time volunteers and a wider network born out of the 2005 flood during their delivery of flood relief to the vulnerable. She recalled that it was distressing to see women fighting and hustling for flood relief on the streets while the men “were basically entertaining themselves waiting for the flood water to go down.” Organising were done in various communities which resulted in a huge meeting held with women and the relevant stakeholders during which the ordinary women from the communities shared what it was they needed and presented their stories.
Red Thread has also been focusing on the working conditions of domestic workers and while they had initially attempted to organise them into unions, de Souza said one of the biggest issues is that there are more women needing jobs than there are jobs, and as such the workers remain vulnerable. And while the women may not readily stand up for their rights she said from their research they are interested in knowing what are their rights and where they can go for help.
“It is a process, and we still have a lot to do in getting the word out there… ‘domestic worker you have rights and these are the things you are entitled to…’”
Some may not always agree with the work of the organisation or some of the issues it addresses, but de Souza emphasised that they are not looking for popularity but do their work because it is necessary and because they too are affected by the conditions they fight against.
