This January 6th, salute Kojo and the Maroons of the Caribbean

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When you hear the word “Maroon,” do you think of the color? Or maybe you think of the band led by Adam Levine (+ Wiz Khalifa) on “Payphone” and other hits. It just so happens that the term was first used in the mid-1600s to describe runaway slaves in Jamaica who joined with Native Taino or “Arawaks” in the high forestry and established themselves as independent communities there. For Spanish speakers, the word may be reminiscent of “marron,” which describes the color Brown. However, the origin of “Maroon” can be traced back to the Spanish’s use of the term “cimarron,” which is how they referred to untamed animals, and eventually, untamed slaves.

The earliest groups of Maroons formed in what the Tainos referred to as “Xaymaca” in 1655, after a battle between the English and Spanish for control of the island left an estimated 1,500 former slaves with few choices: to serve the new British empire on the land, follow their former Spanish masters onto sugar plantations in Cuba, or join the Taino or Amerindian people on the island and fight for autonomy or self-rule. They chose the latter.

Maroons ambush British troops on the Dromilly Estate. Courtesy of the Jamaica/British Library, Public Domain

This did not please the British plantation masters, but can you imagine how they felt when the maroons raided their plantations for food and also freed other slaves while they were at it? By 1728, the maroon rebels were led by “Queen Nanny,” a woman of Ghanaian descent who was estimated to help free at least 1,000 slaves during her leadership of the Windward Maroons on the Eastern part of the island. Her brother Kojo (also Cudjoe) led the Leeward Maroons on the Western part of the island, and is said to have been born on January 6th circa 1660. Together but distinctly, they were central figures in two wars on the crown in Jamaica from 1728 – 1796.

Cudjoe making peace: Colonel John Guthrie, a Jamaican plantation owner, meets Cudjoe, the leader of the Jamaican Maroons. Courtesy of the British Library, Public Domain

Today, Kojo’s life is celebrated each year in Accompong Town, which is still a sovereign Maroon community in Xaymaca, while Queen Nanny is commemorated on the Jamaican $500 note. A total of four Maroon communities continue to live autonomously there in Charles Town, Moore Town, Accompong Town, and Scott’s Hall; they also continue to resist the legacy of colonization, now in the form of protest against bauxite mining and the deforestation it entails for their soil. Bauxite is used to create aluminum metal, and the U.S. maintains two bauxite refineries in Louisiana.

$500 note from the Bank of Jamaica. Courtesy of Public Domain

In any case, now you too can let the city know! You can also now always remember how the mezcla of Black and Red historically makes Maroon. Last but not least, below you can tune into a short film by UCLA Professor Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje and Carol Merrill-Mirsky, Ph.D, courtesy of the UCLA Ethnomusicology Department + the invaluable Internet Archive: “In 1986, Professor Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje and [Merrill-Mirsky] made a short field trip to Jamaica to observe and record the January Sixth celebration of the Maroons of the village of Accompong.”

J.T.

COUNCIL MEMBER SUGGESTS ECHO PARK LAKE FENCE SHOULD BE DOWN BY LATE MARCH

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Firstly, we shout out the city of L.A.’s brand-new Charlotta Bass day, which took place this February 14th, 2023. We also recognize that USC has officially rolled out a new Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab at its Annenberg school. Learn more about Charlotta Bass here.

Secondly, we shout out Mike Bonin’s What’s Next, Los Angeles? podcast. The former council member is interviewing candidates for the upcoming election to fill CD-6, or the southern half of the San Fernando Valley’s seat at L.A. City Council.

We also note that Council Member Soto-Martinez spoke with Kate Cagle of Spectrum news recently, during which he suggested that the fence surrounding Echo Park lake should be taken down around late March before it’s two-year anniversary after being placed there by former representative for the area Mitch O’Farrell. Soto-Martinez states that this is because the park’s maintenance is not solely on him and his office to take care of, but on L.A.’s Parks and Recreation department as well. He and his team are also working with local service-providers to support unhoused people who may look to reside at the park upon the fence’s being taken down, according to the report.

Finally, we share some thoughts on a recent discussion at L.A. City Hall over a new redistricting process, including competing proposals between the city and state Senator Maria Elena Durazo’s office. Our photo for this episode is provided by Associated Press photojournalists Damian Dovarganes and Marcio Sanchez.

For more of these updates and then some, please follow J.T. the L.A. Storyteller on Apple or Spotify, then rate and review us!

And if you’d like to tune into the show from elsewhere, please see our RSS feed here: https://jimbotimes.com/category/podcast/feed/

J.T.

Congrats, Mayor-Elect Bass!

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It’s true that it’s early, but the math looks promising for the candidate originally out of Mid-City Los Angeles, otherwise known as Congressmember Bass, who’s represented the 37th District of California at the nation’s capitol since 2011. According to the L.A. Times, “Independent analysts suggest that a minimum of 300,000 ballots remain to be counted, the vast majority of them mail-ins. Bass pulled from behind in the vote count in the June primary on the strength of mail-in votes, and the new totals this week — with the congresswoman gaining three-fifths of the total 82,510 new votes over two days — suggested a possible repeat of that pattern.”

While many voters will be left wanting by her election, for many others–especially women of color–her victory is a homecoming, if not a welcome break from the usual order of business in the halls of power.

From left to right, 15 Mayors for L.A. since 1913, and finally, Karen Bass.

In the U.S. House of Representatives (where Bass has served), out of 435 seats, only 151 are held by women. Next door, only 24 out of 100 U.S. Senators are women; even locally, at L.A. City Hall, the last four years saw at best only four of fifteen seats occupied by people other than men (and before that, much less); figures like these are why a U.N. report recently noted that at the current rate, it will take another 40 years before gender parity may be established in national congresses or parliaments across the globe.

One gets the sense, though, that elections like Bass’ to the mayor’s office in the second largest city in America will have something to say about that. Congrats are thus in order.

J.T.

J.T. OBSERVES MLK JR. DAY

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Today regarded as an American icon, in his actual life, Martin Luther King Jr. was mostly villainized for his human rights efforts. On this MLK Jr.’s Day, yours truly reflects on the toll inflicted on Black Los Angeles over the last two years of the pandemic; Black people remain over-represented in L.A. County hospitalizations for COVID-19, as well as in the county’s traffic stops, jail cells, and–most deplorably of all–L.A.’s homelessness encampments.

J.T.

EPISODE 45 – HOUSING IN EAST HOLLYWOOD WITH J.T.

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The recorded version of “Housing in East Hollywood, with J.T.,” a free seminar by yours truly with members from in and around East Hollywood on February 2nd, 2021. To read the UCLA Luskin (@UCLALuskin) report on the rate of “corporate landlordship” in L.A. referred to in the Q & A session, find it HERE. Happy Black History month, Los Angeles, and shout out once again to the Anti Eviction Mapping Project: @antievictionmap.

J.T.