I try to understand countries by pounding their streets. This was partly why early morning Monday, 5 October, I hit the streets of New York. How early do people wake up in a city that never sleeps? The rush hour, how is it like?
This day, what attracted me most were children going to school. A man appears with a child sitting with the feet round his neck and clutching his head. I thought this was dangerous. Another approaches, singing loudly with a child running by his side. Then, a lady dashes across the road with two children following closely to catch a bus. Also, there is the kindergarten weeping as the mother dragged him to school. Yes, education is the key to the future, but these children don’t know that yet.
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Three days later, a piece of news I dread in ‘God’s own country’ began to circulate. There has been a shooting. This time, in the Marble Hill neighbourhood of New York City. No, not by a disturbed individual or the police. The shooters were the new kids on the block; the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. They had surrounded the car of 28-year old Dominican migrant, Oscar Belgal, who had his five-year old son with him. ICE agents fired at least seven shots into the car. Belgal was hit in the neck and, seized. But the boy was unhurt.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called President Donald Trump and, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to negotiate Belgal’s release. Unsuccessful, he called a press conference demanding ICE stops its enforcement activities in the city because they are making it less safe. He then made a poetic demand: “This city wants ICE out. We want ICE out of our city, ICE out of our schools, ICE out of our hospitals, ICE out of our streets, ICE away from our kids.”
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The Department of Homeland Security said it was a targeted enforcement operation during which, “the criminal illegal alien was injured.”
The city erupted in anger and two days of rallies followed. The anger was not only directed at the Trump administration, but also at Mamdani because protesters suspect the New York Police Department (NYPD), which he controls, might have aided ICE in the operation. Mamdani had wisely ordered a probe into possible NYPD co-operation.
I thought a lot, not just about American life, but humanity. Where are we coming from, where are we headed? I turned to the American Museum of Natural History. Perhaps it contains some answers. The museum itself is not allergic to controversy. One case was over the bronze statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt. It depicted him on horseback flanked by a walking indigenous American-Indian and an African-American. Some argued that it placed a Whiteman in a position of dominance and the Indigenous and the African as assistants or servants. To these activists, this was a depiction of internal colonialism. The controversy and protests which spread nationwide were so much that in June, 2021 the city Public Design Commission, voted to remove the statute, which had been unveiled in 1940.
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My primary attraction in the museum were the dinosaurs. The creatures had lived 245 million years on earth. There is a 65-million gap between their extinction and the arrival of human beings. It means, before we were, they were; before Adam was created and the subsequent genetic engineering that produced Eve, the dinosaurs had lived.
They seem better adapted to the earth than us. For instance their digestive system enabled them to eat and chew various things including pebbles. While we have two sets of teeth; the baby and adult teeth, the dinosaur with an average 65-teeth, had multiple teeth sets, always replacing its teeth when one is broken or worn down. The Duck-billed dinosaurs for instance, used up to 10,000 teeth in a lifetime. So what do we learn from these creatures that were one to forty metres in length? It is the explosions that led to the dinosaurs extinction. They covered the earth, shading it from the sun for months or years, making living practically impossible. The good news is that we have a similar capacity to cause explosions that can make human life go extinct.
I went through the section on origins of humanity. The Neanderthals, archaic humans who have gone extinct.
In our post-dinosaur world, the largest land animals are the elephants. I went to their section in the museum; giant creatures. The biggest known, was 3.96 metres tall weighing 12.24 tonnes found on 7 November, 1974 in Angola. I looked at them and other animals like gorillas, bears and lions and thought, our predatory inclinations may make these animals go extinct like dinosaurs. The creative displays depicted these animals in their natural environment.
Then, I stepped into another controversy; the North West Coast Hall dedicated to indigenous Indian life and culture. These included regalia for chiefs and spirits and, forms of government in which hierarchy depended not on wealth but how much a person gave out. The hall was filled with works of art and samples of Ocean-going canoes. The carvings, some over seven metres high, were carved from huge trees as were canoes that could carry dozens of persons.
The controversy is the indigenous people who did not see any reason why they should be located in a museum of natural history when they are not animals. But a scholar, Morgan Guerin defended the exhibition. He wrote in a part of the hall: “There is a lot of the ancestors’ souls within these pieces.”
There wasn’t much on Europe and I was advised to go to ‘The Met’ on 1000 Fifth Avenue which had over 5,000 years of art from various parts of the world. Next day, I was there, combing through Roman and Greek arts and African sections which showed that humanity began in Africa as did history.
Outside ‘The Met’ were crowds, some, sitting on steps built from the lower steps of the road, into the doors of the museum.
As usual, when in New York, I visit Harlem. There was the huge statue of Fredrick Douglas, the African American fighter who escaped from slavery to become one of the greatest abolitionists and orators. He once said: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” There was that of Harriet Tubman who helped to free slaves. For her, it was “liberty or death.” On, to an African restaurant almost opposite the Malcolm X Mosque, beside the boulevard named after him. Brother Malcolm used to say, we must be liberated: “By Any Means Necessary.”
Similarly, we must protect human beings from predators and, save humanity from possible dinosaur-like extinction by any means necessary.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
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