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Sharon Amos
Birdie London visit to his house 12/8/78 (sharon, Tony Walker [Tim Carter], Eddie Hallman, Karen Harms, Leslie Wilson)
-Birdie had invited Debbie T. to come over some time and we were to make contact with him so I called him and he wanted us to come over
-said Basil Armstrong had left for the States but told Birdie to give all his friends his well wishes so he Birdie was doing that
-Birdie lives in quite a nice house in a rather fancy district/ his house is an excellent taste/ his wife makes macrame things/ fantastic beautiful things like a plant holder that had 3 wooden trays held up by macrame and a hanging plant that hang quite low with a beautiful fern on it
-they have a daughter who married a Guinean doctor and is in Liberia with him but wants to come back to Guyana. She met him in France/ she is a math teacher at some company/ Birdie said that Liberia is US dominated
-another daughter is married to a white Canadian (the daughter is black) and they have a little son and live in Canada/ Mrs. London (Carmen) is going to see them on holiday soon
-Carmen is an elementary teacher/ she’s very committed and by talking to her I could see she really cares about the children/ reminds me a little of Evenne Golden/ she said the system now is to pass children whether they learn or not and sometimes she thinks it’s a mistake but we talked also about the trauma of being kept back and children teasing you so it’s a difficult problem
-she has one child in her class who is obviously bright as he can take his whole family (the children) all across town and get them where then need to go and figure change but he can’t read – she’s working with him
-both Birdie and Carmen very strongly feel it’s important to build a child’s self-image and they enjoy talking about that/ and I talked about how important that has been to children in PT etc etc etc
-we talked about JT as a social experiment/ Birdie said that he had read about a Yugoslavian that Tito arrested/ his named sounded like Djealous???? / the man wrote a book about the classless society and claimed that there couldn’t be such a thing because there is always some class of people rising up to take dominance, whether it is the intelligencia, the business class, or some group
-we talked about JT, I said that was what was so interesting about JT because we were working on those problems and keeping it from being a power elite of some type or another / we all mentioned how people all put in their imput etc.
-he and his wife felt this could be very significant and Birdi wouldlike to see it/ he came once before with the Educational Ministry but knows there have been changes since then
-we talked about Gore Vidal’s book Julian (I’m almost thru reading it) / Carmen had read it and coincidentally Birdi had just started it/ we talked about the absolute power wielded by the emperors as they could rape and kill and still call themselves Christian divine rulers (they seemed really turned on by this kind of intellectual discussion)
-they used to live in the Interior Corea Or Corian???? or something like that and had not much else to do but read so both would read a lot/ Birdi admitted that he reads on the toilet and some of us said we do that too — they still have the habit of reading a lot and Carmen said she can’t go to bed without a book to read
-we chatted about Jonestown and all the aspects of it which were non-elitist and involved people of all ages, all races, all backgrounds
-then her son and his friend walked in and made an entirely diffeent conversation (Wesley Kirton personified type thing) — she had said before her son Ralph came in that he was very spoiled/ her first tow were girls and then when a son came along, the girls did all the work/ then another son came along and everyone spoiled him, besides he had a stutter slight and
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so they tended to protect him a little so now he tells everyone what to do/ and Carmen and the dad take orders from him
-he came in friendly enough but his friend is a friend of Wesley Kirton and Raul Blackmon (they seem to haunt us everywhere)
-said he had been doing some investigation on PT but that didn’t mean he was a reporter
-he’s a student of UG
-I asked if he was religious and he said he was “indifferent”/ I asked what his politics were and he said he was “indifferent” there too
-both he and Ralph were talking us on so I said “oh you want to find out about PT so you can be indifferent to us too” and everyone laughed
-he and Ralph (his name was Steve Frazier by the way) are about 20 and reminded me of the Sophists in the book Julian whose whole life is based on taking on everyone (and doing nothing) as they were sort of philosophers
-They asked us why we were here in a socialist country/ why didn’t we stay in the US where we could effectthe social order there
-I gave a lot of background and so did Tony about the media control and how they try to dishonor socialist or interracial groups and they make you to look like common criminals/ Carmen said that they did that to Jesus too as he died as a common criminal
-but Ralph then said but look at the impact Jesus had because now almost everyone is Christian
-we talked about the different environment now/ media penetrates everywhere people inthe US aren’t ready to hear / they have it too good/ their standard of living is based on exploitation of peoples abroad
-talked about Unita Blackwell WRight and the conspiracy/ the bacce decision/ black elected officials, Huey Newton, the black Panthers
-they kept coming back to the question “why didn’t you stay there/ we are already socialists here”
-a couple of times Birdi intervened and argued with Ralph and told him he souldn’t talk all the time as he was monopolizing the conversation
-the motehr disagreed with him a couple of times but once in awhile would parrot what he said “oh you think they could have more effect if they stayed there” etc.
-when asked about our group I said we were Disciples of Christ based on the humanitarian beliefs of Christ and we try to put them to action and that thru Christianity people have come to understand socialism
-Ralph claimed he was socialist
-he kept askingwhat our goals were and why we came here in the first place/ why Guyana of all places/ why did we leave the US and etc etc
-I explained about wanting a place for our children to be reared in dignity and where all races were represented/ and how JJ and Marcie had visited 17 years ago but saw oppression and how they had watched the changes and the courageous stands the PM had taken
-how the govt had welcomed us
-they still said that it doesn’t make an impact to come where we already have socialist ideas
-I said that socialism is a process and that we didn’t see ourselves as Nationalistic/ we were citizens of the world and we had tried for 30 years in the US/ all the work JJ had done across the US and how people in the US hadn’t suffered enough/ they weren’t ready to listen
-we saw that the process of Guyana was moving but we wanted to be part of it
-talked about what JJ had gone thru/ after he came back from Cuba, the free newspaper/ taking on the Nazis the stabbing, bombing of the senior center etc
-how we were concerned about children and seniors that we were ready to die but we didn’t just want to be fodder/ senate bill 1437 and the implications of that
-they were more interested in arguing tho in listening and I said that there questions were good but if they had a set hypothesis, that they came with
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and they were going to leave with the same hypothesis without really exchanging information, it was just like talking to themselves
-that if they could empathize they could understand the pain that this decision came out of/ told them of J’s heart attack when he had to leave the US, mentioned how Lenin had gone into exodus too so that he could survive until the time was right
-that we wanted children to have a chance to become socialists but it was difficult with the double life they had to live inthe US/ schoolinterrogating them about living cooperatively and if they said the word socialistit was trouble
-how people have been taught to fear the word socialism in the US
-finally Steve asked why we felt a need to be political if we were a religious group/ I said that we had all kinds of political views but it was the life style
-he said that he didn’t understand that if we were socialists
-I asked him if he felt Jesus was political because in revelations -the apostles all brought all that they had and all had things in common – I said that’s certainly economic
-they couldn’t answer that and laughed they couldn’t deal with that and left
-during the conversation once his mother told Ralph k that ke if he was socialist he’d let others talk other than himself and he generally made a fool out of himself even standing up to dominate/ we just shut up for awile and let him spout off
-Steve and Ralph after they left met our truck as we were leaving/ they asked for a ride and we let them climb up/ Steve said he’d like to see the project to see forhimself/
-they served refreshments and asked us to come back so we could taste something else/ I forgot what it was
-I think they were a little embarrassed about their son so I said that bright children are that way, they have to argue with everything and challenge everything to see what survives and what doesn’t
-Birdi in his position has had to take over Basil’s work and so he has to travel all over the Rupununi administering the schools which is hard on him and his wife worries about his health
-visiting when we first came in was a Swedish woman Sisi they call her who is married to the brother of Minister Shahabadeen/ she was friendly and then there was a couple of teachers visiting -they were telling kind of jokes about who would sleep with whom/ Sisi said she had to
get hom as her husband wouldkick her out/ Birdi’s wife Carmen said Sisi could sleep there and then they joked about sleeping with a woman/ sisi was middle aged – not the kind of woman who is that easy to approach but she was casual and friendly to the Londons and was friendly in a casual way to us
-we brought Birdi a bottle of whisky which he appreciated/ he said he felt bad we didn’t drink whisky afterbringing him some but we all had pop (sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a problem for us in some situations that we don’t drink as it makes us stand out so much and people remark about it so much as if we are all immature because of it/ I don’t trust most of our people tho to drink so I know it isn’t possible but once in awhile I’ve wondered if we wouldn’t have an easier time in some social situations if people didn’t see us as so wierd ????????? it’s a dilemma either way I think tho but it’s such a custom in Guyana to drink at a party
-Steve and Ralph said they wanted to get together again for debate (I said OK but I said I’m kind of old to go thru this kind of thing and would we always have to argue) – they laughed / some young people almost seem to get their sexual rocks off doing this kind of thing/ they do it with
such joy and I’m sure it’s the whole teenage rebellion directed in this case against us
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-I do-nt know if I already mentioned this or not but at one point Toni was saying something about socialism leading to communism and I later told him Guyanese often see Communism as an evil tho they accept or some accept socialism/ but I said that we have a variety of political opinions in the group as we believe in freedom of thought