Freedom is something that comes with rights and responsibilities.
— Marcus Goffe2024
Marcus Goffe
Marcus Goffe was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and is a lawyer and lecturer at the University of the West Indies. In the full interview, Goffe discusses his upbringing and early influences, his embrace of Rastafarianism, the last impacts of British colonialism on Jamaican society, especially regarding education, his work around issues of land and environmental justice, indigenous rights, and knowledge production, particularly with Maroon communities, and his thoughts on freedom and reparations. This interview was conducted in English in Kingston, Jamaica.
Watch the full interviewConversation Transcript
Freedom? Well, I think freedom is something that comes with rights and responsibilities. You know, I would say that, certainly in the colonial context, the freedom must be to self-identify as we are, right? It must be the freedom to denounce, in no uncertain terms, all of the ills and the evils of slavery and colonization, you know, and the freedom to set a path for ourselves to self determine or future ourselves based on our own perceptions of realities and our own principles and aspirations. So I would say that’s the the rights know the responsibilities, of course, and freedom is to also take care of ourselves collectively because it can be each man for himself, each country, for himself when it comes to reparations, you know, the global work that you’re doing and reparations is so important because for this to really be something that is going to achieve, you know, itself one day, it’s going to have to be a global effort to be able to put pressure through moral suasion and otherwise on Europe to pay reparations, I mean, cash for me in all of the other aspects that reparation encompasses, right?
