BVI joining Black Lives Matter movement
Scene from a Black Lives Matter protest. (Photo credit: Sky News)
The British Virgin Islands is joining the ranks of protesters involved in the Black Lives Matter movement happening globally.
Radio talkshow host Claude Skelton Cline has issued a clarion call to BVI residents from all ethnic backgrounds to participate in a solidarity march this Saturday, June 20.
The march will begin at 3 pm from the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park in Road Town and will culminate at the Queen Elizabeth Park.
“The march is a simple march of our showing, in a demonstrable way, our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in America and indeed across the world against racism, against bigotry, against intolerance. It’s about showing our solidarity with the sufferers of the world,” Skelton Cline said on his Honestly Speaking radio programme on Tuesday.
We are vulnerable too!
Skelton Cline told residents that they are vulnerable to racism too, as they also travel around the world, and many of their children attend school abroad.
“We are just as susceptible. If these things do not change institutionally, if these things do not change systematically, we and our children, and our grandchildren can become victims. This is the time for all people to join with a singular voice in solidarity of what has happened to persons of African descent throughout this world. We must move from protest to policy changes; we must move from demonstration to legislation,” he added.
The Black Lives Matter movement was revived after the May 25 killing of an African American man, George Floyd. Floyd died after an on-duty caucasian police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The cop, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with murder.
Addressing controversial cartoon
In the meantime, Skelton Cline’s call for local support of the Black Lives Matter movement comes at a time when he and local news website Virgin Islands News Online (VINO) have come under heavy criticism for a cartoon of Governor Augustus Jaspert kneeling on his neck. The cartoon is directly related to statements he made on his radio talk show on June 9.
Responding to the backlash via the same medium, Skelton Cline said he did not take the cartoon personally.
He explained: “It’s not about me. I’m a representation, as a citizen with a point of view of what I see and what we are experiencing as Virgin Islanders. The depiction of the Governor is a … reflection that represents the United Kingdom in our geopolitical construct. That’s the way I see it, that’s the way I took it.”
The cartoon has been deemed as being in poor taste and calls were made for its removal and even for advertisers to boycott the Julian Willock-owned news website.
At least one advertiser, CCT, has since suspended future advertising with VINO until the cartoon is removed.
Skelton Cline, however, has called for persons to redirect their energies towards identifying and boycotting companies across the US, UK and the wider world that still practise slave labour and racism.
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Let’s see how many BVI whites march with the rest- that will be a great test
It’s ironic that the most racist people of the BVI want to march and protest. If the whites living in the Territory were racist do you think they would remain living under a black government. It’s good to see how racist the locals are.
I think you will find it is people who do not belong to the BVI that are most racisit towards white people.
Crap.
Why does BVI ews seem to agree with you and block the thumbs down button?
Meanwhile, those satement could not be further from facts and truths.
One often wonders what’s inside of some minds, for thruths and facts they appear completely devoid of.SMDH.
I think the BVI Blacks should protest and burn down Roadtown and loot every store just like their brethren are doing in the US. Then we will see real solidarity amongst the evil that is within you.
@ Think
It was white people looting and burning. Black people were peacefully protesting.
Please give an exmaple of how locals are racist, a mindingful example, not predujice-comments but real hate/harm.
THAT’S a no brainer STATEMENT, YOU FOOL.
who do you think run show ?
There comes a point where so called anti racism becomes itself racism. Skelton Cline’s constant insults towards white people does not win him friends except amongst his fellow racists .
Roll up! Roll Up!
Saturday 3pm!
It’s the BVI’s Big Orwellian Thought Test!
For: people born with low melanin content only!
Judged by: anyone non-white, no other qualifications necessary! Random haters welcome. Misogynists, wife beaters, homophobes, xenophobes, and child abusers, too!
Your chance to make a list of people who must be racist because they didn’t attend! Then take, or simply ruin, their life!
“Cline says jump so y’all better jump!”
Bonus Sabbath After Party
Witch dunking! Let’s see who’s a servant of the devil by holding them underwater until they drown …. or not!
I would have liked to have come but I am in work and it is too late notice. Wish everyone lots of support #BLM
And they against their own “black” Caribbean people. SMH. What sense. We racist too.
Skelton Smith disrespected the death of Floyd by his reference to the Governor having his foot on the neck of the BVI (which comment prompted the terrible cartoon, and the subsequent blacklisting of VINO by advertisers).
He should be ashamed of himself, and now he is trying to be front and center again. Publicity hungry foolishness and stupidness. He needs to take a seat, put a large vegetable in his mouth, and listen rather than talk nonsense.
“And they against their own “black” Caribbean people. SMH. What sense. We racist too.”
Given that you know this is so, what are doing to begin to change it?
Do you know, are aware that you and most of us were deliberately programmed to be against each other, whether loacl or other CARIBBEAN BLACK?
Last, racism is having and exacting hatred and prejudice against an individual or race based solely on the biological pigmentation color of the skin.
Caribbean people are not racist people against their own.Their programmed hatred stems from other human conditions.
There is a distinct difference between hatred of skin color and regional prejudice.
You are blaming whites people because you mistreat and abuse black people from other islands? Sit down.
What low level ignorance is that statement? geeezz!!!
The BVI constantly discriminates it’s own black people based on where they born or grew up. The systematic dislike of our own has been happening for years. Even BVI to BVI people. Tortolians was the worst, look at vg, Jvd and anegeda residents as lesser than for years and it continue to this day.
The poster is basically saying clean your house before you want to upon a door about black lives matter regarding racism from the white man. It’s worst to be discriminated from your own color.
ayo just wanna be in thing
1. Social Security, NHI and Payroll Tax that is being deducted from employees and not being paid and no one is held accountable.
2. The recent Stamp Duty that seem to benefit a chosen few – Don’t ask me who?
3. Cronyism – This administration has a whole new meaning to cronyism. It is all too glaring.
Until we start to march about the issues facing us as a people in this territory, then will I march. Charity begins at home.
THANK YOU! But the idiots want to march and calling businesses over a stupid a** cartoon!!!!!
@Here’s what ill march to..
Would you march against people who have work permits approved and they do not pick them up?
Want to protest? Protest gambling in the BVI and all the associated crime and social degradation that comes with gambling. The Paradisio proposed development lost the election for the VIP to NDP, here we go again, VIP will lose the next election if they bring gambling to the BVI.. Count on it….
I with you on this one. Claude and others who are consulting the premier will.cause VIP the next election
Agreed, Cline and Willock are not helping but Fahie is doing a pretty good job on his own demise. BVI needs to sweep around it’s own front door before telling someone else how to live!
You want to march bout black lives lmatter…but you all fighting against each other , this doesn’t make any sense at all Its all a show …
7 percent tax being charge from poor people and them children.
poor people that send out on average $200,000.00 everyday from the BVI, yes real poor people.
Romans 1:29
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips.
When we see all the above lookup because redemption draws near.
this is weak and they there trying to kill the esteem business over a cartoon SMH set of two faced hypocrites
It would be a good idea if all people of beautiful colour who cannot attend the march could dress in black on Saturday in support of this all-important cause.
NOOO!!!!
Yes you should all wear black like your going to your own funeral. It’s only time till the Belonger is dead
Do these people know how BLM started and who is behind it? Hmmmm!!
If black lives mattered these attention seekers would use their energies to reach the youth that are killing themselves on scooters daily. Do you see white people dying on scooters and bikes here? Do black lives really matter or only when it can get you in the spotlight for fb likes and to feel like you have done something good? What has any of these people done for their fellow black people? Marching and talking s**t doesnt help anyone, try doing some real meaningful work in the communities and make a difference. All this set want is studio, fb and TV time!
Well said !
Black lives don’t matter when the Controlling Elite are making money importing motor bikes.
CCT are COWARDS!!!!! They know full well that VINO cartoons only run for 1 week so who are they fooling? They are not moving their ads its all smoke and mirrors!! Ads are done on a monthly basis and by the time their ad renews the cartoon in question will be gone. People are so dumb and blind its not funny.
Solidarity with our brothers and sister in America? When has the BVI ever had anything good to say about the US, let alone show support of any kind of a matter involving the US??
While Aya marching for black lives matters , why not mixing expats lives matter also here the bvi, because we been acting very much racis to them
I only ever heard of this guy a few years ago, When he turned up I thought he was from the U.S. I guess he thought it was too hard to make a living there and decided to move back to the BVI, where he incorrectly thought his people were easy prey.
We paying him $16,666.66 per month – that pretty easy
Wait! There is a March on June 20 – but the BVI’s have strict Covid regulations?
ALL LIVES MATTER. BLACK, WHITE, YELLOW, BEIGE
is so amusing to witness the overt reverse psychology tended towards the topic of racism in this territory.
A fool never see his own ignorance, nor admits his own recognized shortcomings.
I’ll march when there is a march ABOUT something. “Solidarity”, like we don’t have any problems with institutional racism? Like the very foundations of our government and economy are not colonial?
Why are our schools such a mess? Why is NHI being allowed to go broke because some employers pocket the money they withold from employees’ pay? Why are so many colonial institutions like Cable & Wireless and ‘the electricity corporation’ allowed to ride us all like a tired mule? Add your own to the list…..
We HAVE SYSTEMIC issues of our own- they are racial because they were set up by the ‘mother country’ to control us- to inspire graft and cronyism, so we can never unite….we are right where they want us. Open your eyes SMH.
The colonials that is. See how well, the other islands have done without them.
I didn’t say the colonials, I wrote that the political and economic systems under which we currently labor are designed for control and to inspire graft and cronyism so we always fight. We have to rethink our systems: as a former slave colony, the institutions of control are inherently racist.
BVILanders are a set of hypocrites, We have black on black racism right here in the BVI, when you call those down island people, as you call them and treat them like slave and don’t what to give their offspring who are born here any documents that stated that they are British overseas territory citizens that is being racist. When you charge them tax on already tax dollars just to send money home, that’s racist, when you get any chance to slander them, that’s racist. when they work hard for a little dollar and you refuse to pay them, well that slavery. We have a racist and slavery mentality here in the BVI. We think we are Americans but really we are island people from the Caribbean too.
Calling all down Island people. Lets march for the injustices towards us in the BVI. Lets march on taxing monies sent abroad to support our children and parents. Lets march against racism towards us.
The fact that the r***st Cline is involved is enough to make people not want to support this.
Side chicks matter!!
I suggest Claude go and march in Detroit
I need a job….asap
blm is a terrorist group. hard pass for me
Expats hear me well providing you are not marching against victimization on expats who have no reason to march. Expats live matters too.