Erin Greene - human rights activist: It is important for me to educate people about the constitution and the citizen’s constitutional obligation to the country... and to other citizens and people resident or present in The Bahamas

Profile: Erin Greene


BY SONIA FARMER
NG National Correspondent
sonia@nasguard.com


For Erin Greene, human rights activism is a way of life. Though she is often called upon to comment on gay rights issues, what most may not realize is that she fights for many who struggle for their voice to be heard in The Bahamas—including, but not limited to, women, immigrants, children, the disabled and the incarcerated.

“I use the title human rights activist the most because the principle behind it is you have to acknowledge that my rights don’t exist without your rights,” she explains. “We can’t talk about animal rights if we are not talking about women’s rights—our rights are the foundation upon which all rights are granted.”

This is reflected in the amount of NGO organizations she has contributed to, including the Rainbow Alliance of The Bahamas; Pride Bahamas; CARIFLAG Bahamas (Caribbean Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals and Gays); Bahamian-Haitian Solidarity for immigration rights; and the Bahamas Human Rights Network.

Her interest in this spans beyond simply their individual agendas—it settles instead upon teaching people about tolerance in their communities.

“It is important for me to educate people about the constitution and the citizen’s constitutional obligation to the country and to other citizens and people resident or present in The Bahamas,” she says.

However, gaining justice for these marginalized groups, she points out, requires open-mindedness, which can only be gained through education—which is exactly what she does. Erin is a big believer in educating oneself about social issues as a way of debating them—an appreciation she developed from her upbringing.

“For my mother’s peers and that generation and generations before that, education was important. Whether you went to college or not, you were always learning,” she explains. “I was entrenched in a culture of appreciation for education. So I think as a culture and as individual community, we have stopped emphasizing the importance of education, so we have lost the idea of education as empowerment and we simply see education as a requirement for a job.”

The problem arises, she says, when one believes they can hold a debate about serious human rights issues when they know simply a fraction of the language and information. They forego book leaning, and by doing so, devalue themselves and their cultural development.

“The one book that is in every Bahamian household is the bible, and Bahamians know it inside out, they reference it, they’ve memorized it,” she points out. “So we are not a people incapable of learning, but we are a shallow people, and you have a group of people who think they have the ability and academic or scholarly authority to interpret the bible, and they don’t engage the actual academic education.”

“Likewise, they read a paragraph of a book in a field of many books and they believe they have the scholarly authority to interpret that information without any other information in that field, without even speaking to another person in that field—they just know what it is,” she continues.

Yet the unfortunate state of education has come to be due to a large and seemingly unmanageable series of events and cultural norms that Erin believes we must examine closely. Factors such as lazy parenting whereby we discourage curiosity and a culture where we discourage public critique, breed children who don’t know how to learn, and coincidentally adopt passionate standings on social issues that were realized through ignorance and partial research.

The responsibility falls not only to the government but to the community to bring back that appreciation of education and culture of learning in order to hold significant debates about issues pertaining to our humanity.

“Civil society has not invested enough in institutions of learning, education and empowerment,” she points out. “We need a tax right away, we need to legalize a national lottery right away if not only to create a special ACE (Arts, Culture and Education) tax and we as a people need to put our money where our mouths are and really fund, because the books aren’t there, the resources aren’t there.”

It is in this larger framework of shortcomings that Erin hopes to step in and individually help educate people completely in a subject—whether it is immigration rights, women’s rights, gay rights, or disabled rights. Justice and equal footing can only begin with understanding and compassion, and so she practices these in her daily interactions as a mouthpiece for those who desperately need one in a culture of ignorance—whether the people listening are ready to accept the realities of their world or not.

“People will do what they want. That’s what makes the world work,” she points out. “I think as part of the human experience, if you can respect that and honor that, when you can wrap your ego around that, then you can begin to learn about a world where everybody deserves rights, and there’s no question about whether people deserve rights or not. Even within that, you can’t force that realization upon anybody. It’s that’s a thing that people come to themselves at different times in their lives.”

It’s a tough path for anyone to take, battling against what can be at times outward hatred to dispel stereotypes and encourage understanding, but again her upbringing taught her about education as the key to helping people.

“I was raised in a culture of volunteerism and community awareness,” she says, and indeed, Erin’s work as a teenage councilor in the Methodist Youth Summer Camp, Bible Schools and the Police Force Summer Youth Program helped her gain awareness and appreciation for teaching people interesting and relevant life skills and understanding.

But it wasn’t until she came back from her college studies and identified as gay, becoming part of Pride Bahamas, that she became a spokesperson for gay rights issues through that group—which soon expanded to include human rights in all of its forms.

“It all spiraled out of control from there,” she laughs. “I’m at the point now that everything I do now has some form or level of activism in it. But I think it’s because I’ve learned that as an activist, as an artist, and an entrepreneur, whatever you do in The Bahamas, you’re doing that work and you’re also doing the work of building a culture of appreciation for what you do. So if I’m doing gay rights work, or if you’re doing animal rights now or environmental work, half of your work is building a culture of appreciation for human rights.”

Two major ways she is able to build this appreciation is by way of her work as an artist and through her well-known humor. Her artwork, such as the fringed tie Junkanoo objects in her exhibition “Jux-Tie-Position” examine our relationships to culture and sexuality, and emphasizes cultural discourse as a means to social activism.

Yet Erin is truly able to create a culture of open-mindedness and appreciation for human rights by educating people through her use of humor. She used to perform stand-up pieces during the open-mic nights Express Yourself, and for four years has been involved in the improv troupe Da SPOT for about four years now, which in itself is a social commentary-based sketch group. She also runs the radio show “The Culture of Things” which is now in its second season. Humor is a powerful tool for Erin to use because it dissipates any passionate situation, and makes serious issues relatable.

“Humor is one of those necessary attributes that allows you to see, that rewires the brain to be able to see without getting mad or upset,” she says. “It’s subversive. It is an act of civil disobedience. Because people don’t realize you’re talking about serious stuff and their radar is down, their force field is down, and you’re able to put it into their heads and when they’re at home and in a more comfortable space, they’re able to really think about it.”

In the end, just as she proclaims, all of Erin’s efforts go towards developing some sort of social consciousness. To Erin, The Bahamas has moved forward rapidly with the world but has done little growing consciously. She hopes that by continuing to compassionately, honestly and otherwise hilariously educate those willing to listen, The Bahamas can become a community and part of a world that creates safe spaces for those who are part of a vulnerable community.

“People deserve rights because they are human beings. We all deserve rights. Its not even that we deserve them—we have them— it just that we deserve the respect of those rights,” she explains. “I wish us the wisdom to look back to the past, the courage to stretch our arms out to the future and the compassion to share the present with everybody around us.”

Aug 08, 2011

thenassauguardian

Caribbean Blog International