Chronicles of a Chronic Caribbean Chronicler
By Earl Bousquet
Every now-and-then, one feels very good about something – and that’s exactly how I felt on Thursday evening (May 7, 2026), while following a youth debate on Reparations in the St. Kitts and Nevis (SKN) national parliament.
The youth – members of the SKN National Youth Parliament, appropriately dressed by mode and code — were discussing a resolution entitled: ‘Advocating for Reparatory Justice – A youth Call for Decisive Action’.
An initiative inspired in January 2026 by members of the SKN Youth Parliament, The Repair Campaign’s (TRC) local Community Organizer and the National Reparations Committee (SKN-NRC), it was hosted in and by the twin-island Federation’s parliament.
Viewers were riveted to the lively debate between two teams of young persons representing Government and Opposition and the proceedings — presided over by a young Speaker of the House — included presentations by a Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, Cabinet Ministers and MPs.
The presentations revealed deep research into the subject matters and the exchanges were as engagingly prepared and spontaneous during presentations and rebuttals, in ways that had many viewers abroad wishing they were real deliberations in their home parliaments and national assemblies.
The speakers debated the main questions on average Caribbean citizens’ minds about CARICOM’s 12-year-old call for Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide – from Who Owes, Why and How-Much, to What’s to Be Done with Reparations.
The young presenters cited CARICOM’s Ten-Point Plan (TPP) for Reparatory Justice, which guides and drives the regional movement that’s gone global and mushroomed into the most-important Human Rights issue of the 21st Century.
They were also concerned that any reparations debt paid by capital should be put to proper development use and guarded against wastage or corruption.
As I watched and listened to the Gen-Z who’ll chart SKN and the Caribbean’s tomorrows, I also saw and heard another unfolding chapter in a story written by many.
An age-old movement revived just-over a-decade-ago, had grown from akin the slow-streaming ripple effects of a pebble in a bucket of water, to a tsunami that’s beached across the Caribbean and Latin America, USA and Canada, UK and Europe, Africa and India – and now, Iran.
When members of the NRCs — established after the 2013 Heads meeting St. Vincent & The Grenadines (SVG) meeting of leaders that created the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) — took the Reparations message to Caribbean secondary schools in 2014 and 2015, students were asking ‘Why those subjects are not in tour history books?’ and virtually beg presenters to “Send us the link…”
Today, while elderly Caribbean folk continue to wonder and ponder over whether they’ll collect a ‘Grandfather’s Backpay’ in ‘our lifetime’, the teenaged Netizens are being well-served by search engine research and social media messaging, feeding their thoughts with nourishing ideas about what they feel reparations should look like.
What I saw and heard ‘Live and Direct’ on my screen that evening filled me with the deep sense of satisfaction felt by the many other viewers who invested in the rewarding rates of return we earned watching and listening to what were once dreams of our fertile imaginations.
But that’s not all…
A similar joint youth parliament reparations debate will take place in Saint Lucia on May 26 and 27, hosted by the NRC and TRC, while the NRC is discussing a proposed CARICOM Youth Ambassadors regional reparations debate as a proposed side-line event during the upcoming July 5-8 CARICOM Summit in Saint Lucia.
Kudos must go to the organizers and the SKN national and youth parliaments – and most-of-all to the young MPs who made the region proud of how they discussed and debated several aspects of an issue affecting the region’s people they’ll always need to know more about.
These youth debates are already spurring interest in all other CARICOM member-states; and existence of a 25-year-old SKN youth parliament should also encourage similar thinking elsewhere.
Importantly, SKN’s Prime Minister, Dr Terrance Drew – CARICOM’s current Chairman – attended the session and will have proudly noted the high level of debate that instilled Caribbean pride beyond the Federation’s borders.
The two-day Saint Lucia youth parliament debate will immediately follow Africa Day (May 25) and precede CARICOM-African Union Day (September 7), ahead of the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Antigua & Barbuda in November, where a Reparations Village will also stand tall.
By the time the Saint Lucia summit is over, elected parliamentarians across the region will surely have been warned to start getting-to-know-more about Reparations, which is climbing higher on the agenda of the ever-growing new voting majority, who’re increasingly interested in the CARICOM quest and its TPP for Reparatory Justice for victims of what the world now admits was The Gravest Crime Against Humanity.
Thursday evening was also a replay of part of my own Reparations Story: feeling like when I used to follow every related word from the mouths and lips of historians like Drs Kenny D. Anthony, Hilary Beckles, Ralph Gonsalves, Verene Shepherd, June Soomer and others, explaining the relationships between the reparations-related writings of Sir Arthur Lewis and the calls by Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari Movement for ‘Repatriation’.
The reparations movement was born the moment the Europeans started destroying the native civilizations they met in the region they renamed ‘Americas’ and ‘West Indies’ after Christopher Columbus opened the way in 1492; and when the first African was captured and sold into Slavery.
Since then, it’s lived in the hearts and minds of People of African Descent, for life-everlasting.
struggles taught us much — and today’s old and new generations are merging energies and sharing synergies, along similar and different routes, to the ultimate common destination: Reparations for all, wherever due!
That’s why, as I watched and listened Thursday evening, my late great eternal soulmate James Brown’s forever hit kept ringing in my ears, reminding me, after each speaker, that ‘I Feel Good!’
And I still do…