The Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission is pleased to announce the 16th Annual Watchnight Gathering, scheduled for Wednesday, 31st July, at the Botanical Gardens, starting at 7:30 pm. This free event continues a cherished tradition symbolizing the anticipation enslaved Africans felt as they awaited news of their freedom. The evening promises a rich tapestry of music, libation, drumming, messages, songs, iron band performances, and more, celebrating freedom, faith, community, and resilience.
This year, the feature address will be delivered by Ambassador Dr. June Soomer, a distinguished St. Lucian and Chairperson of the Permanent Forum for People of African Descent (PFPAD). PFPAD is a United Nations General Assembly consultative mechanism aimed at improving the safety and quality of life for people of African descent and other relevant stakeholders. Ambassador Soomer, the former Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), has been serving as the Chair of The UWI Global Campus Council since January 2024. She is also a member of the St. Lucia National Reparations Committee and holds a PhD in History from The UWI, where she was the first female to earn this degree from the Cave Hill Campus. Her illustrious career includes serving as St. Lucia’s ambassador to the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and CARICOM, with responsibility for diaspora affairs from 2008-2016.
We are also excited to welcome Ms. Janae Jackson from the Commonwealth of Dominica as one of the featured artists. Ms. Jackson, a talented calypsonian and full-time attorney, captivated the ABRSC with her performance at the recent Organization of American States Symposium themed ‘People of African Descent in the Americas.’ She performed “Echoes of the Mill,” a song written and composed by her father, Ian Jackson. Ms. Jackson is the reigning Calypso Queen of Dominica, a three-time winner of the Dominica Broadcasting Station (DBS) Christmas Song Contest, and a celebrated vocalist, having won ‘Best Lead Vocalist’ in the Rex Nettleford Choir Festival in Jamaica. She is an executive member and mezzo-soprano of Dominica’s National Choir, The Sixth Form Sisserou Singers, and has represented her country at the Music Model & Talent Showcase (MMTS) in The Bahamas.
The evening will also feature performances by the Antigua Dance Academy, Annia Matthew (Anni), Rashid Walker, King Zacary, Nyabinghi Drummers, Queen B, Kimmy, and the Point and Police Iron Band. The ABRSC is proud to host the 16th Anniversary of the Watchnight Gathering as part of this year’s Emancipation Celebrations.
The Emancipation celebrations will continue with the annual Emancipation Day Church Service at the Green Bay Moravian Church on Thursday, 1st August, at 6 am.
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Not with traitors like dorbrene omarde been associated with emancipation, when he can’t emancipate barbudans, and this watering down of emancipation by white directive as the almighty tourism is a joke, they don’t want us to get up and make proclamations each year that probably would have return our lands from white Hands who got it before independence which was by white entitlement, like mill reef jumby bay and lands by the shoul family, their should be land expropriation without compensation and redistribute to the black indigenous people, freetown village was where you see mill reef now sitting, it was collusion with the church to move these people from these beach front lands after a bad hurricane for gentrification, that’s the same similar thing Gaston has repeated today in the Barbuda hurricane tragedy, where he displace barbudans for white wealthy people, that’s what mill reef colluded with the then white British government at the time and did as white privilege was the order of the day, John I martin did not just come by his lands as a black man, he had a white handler, his wife was white, because the British would have never bequeath such wealth upon him, shoul family was left with the lands with the complicity of vc bird, so white people was given a economic start ahead of the real suffering Antiguan black slaves. Barbudans have it different with communal lands ideology, but they too are subjected by the very council to colonial boundaries that was set by the Codrington, stay in one area and don’t occupy the beaches, so that’s how Gaston get to take them, the council should have assisted the barbudans into tourism market by helping to build on these beaches and get tax and create wealth barbudans instead a Gaston creating wealth for white people.
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