‘Big Stone’ has no regrets for wearing chains in PNP sketch

The man who sparked controversy when he was released from chains by People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding during a constituency conference on Sunday is unrepentant about his role in the affair.

Claude ‘Big Stone’ Sinclair instead says he is very happy to see that his actions caused the nation’s eyes to open to the mental and psychological chains binding it.

He told The Gleaner yesterday that he was offended to be called “dark-skinned” in the discourse which has arisen since, describing himself instead as a “black man”.

He said his actions had nothing to do with colour and that Golding’s race had nothing to do with it.

Describing himself as a supporter of the late Michael Manley, he said, “the greatest social revolution the country has seen since independence happened under the leadership of Michael Manley”.

Like Manley, Golding is also a white Jamaican.

Sinclair said that, throughout his interactions with the PNP president, Golding did not see colour in people.

‘MAN TO EASE BURDEN’

“I did not arrange anything with the party leader. I went there in chains, and it is not a light chain. I wanted people to see the bondage that was on the necks of ordinary Jamaica. I wanted them to see the heavy weight of suffering that is killing people, like crime, violence, and poverty. I believe that Mark Golding is the man, like Manley, to ease that burden,” the advocate and businessman said.

According to him, many of those who have found a problem with what he did, “are comfortable praying to have a white Jesus as their Saviour”.

“I am a Rastaman. I did not go there representing the Rastafarian community. This is a group of people oppressed for years and chained by the systems designed to keep them chained. The chain was a symbolic representation of that oppression,” he insisted.

At the conference, he said someone noticed him in the crowd wearing the chains and indicated to a member on the platform that he wished to come on the stage. He said that the party’s general secretary, Dr Dayton Campbell, was notified and Sinclair told him that he wanted Golding to release him from the “chains of oppression”.

“I gave him the key. I wanted them to know that I am willing to trust this person to release me from the bondage and they could trust him too. So this is a lot of noise, and a lot of hypocrisy,” he said.

Sinclair, who added that he has travelled the length and breadth of the country advocating for persons being oppressed in one form or the other, said he wished the nation would united against oppression.

The series of events have sparked rigorous debate in the public space.

In a release on Tuesday, Culture Minister Olivia Grange condemned the “deeply offensive” skit and demanded an apology from Golding, who was just months ago at the centre of another saga rooted in the slavery era after Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke referred to him as ‘Massa Mark’.

Grange, who also has oversight of the National Council on Reparations, said “the ‘slavery scene’ in which the opposition leader positioned himself as the main character and chief arbiter on the issue of whether a black man is freed, is deeply offensive and is an affront to the entire nation”.

She added: “My heart sank as I remembered the ancestors who were similarly treated as they endured hundreds of years of unspeakable oppression and brutality perpetrated by white colonial enslavers in a long war for our freedom today.”

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com